For nearly four years, economists have been predicting that consumers would fail the economy. To their point, sustained high inflation, the fastest Fed tightening cycle in decades, and more recently, surging gasoline prices and interest rates should be taking a toll on consumer spending. In some respects, those and other factors are weighing on the […]
The sequence of return risk is the quiet reason two retirees with identical average returns can end up in very different places. Let’s start with an easy example. Two people retire on the same day with the same million dollars. They have the same portfolio and the same 30-year average return. They should both live […]
For more than a decade following the Financial Crisis, one acronym embodied the investment landscape: TINA, “there is no alternative.” The logic behind TINA was that the Fed and most other developed nations’ central banks held interest rates near zero and even below zero in some cases. As a result, Treasury, corporate, municipal, and international […]
The headlines have never sounded scarier, and the market keeps setting records, which is exactly why investor optimism wins over a full cycle, and why your own behavior is the real risk. Hope is not an investment strategy. Every advisor has said some version of that line, and it holds up. You cannot pray for […]
A dollar today buys nearly twice as many Japanese yen as it did fifteen years ago. Crude oil, in yen terms, is up roughly 70% year to date. Food prices are similarly elevated. Japan imports most of the energy and much of the food it consumes, paying for it in dollars that keep getting more […]
Consensus earnings estimates now sit close to 50% above trend, and that gap is exactly where an earnings mean reversion tends to begin. This has been an incredible year in that Wall Street has spent all of it raising its earnings estimates, and the second-quarter season only accelerated the trend. Analysts began the year expecting […]
We publish this article hours before the Fed updates monetary policy at its September 16, 2026, FOMC meeting. Prior to its decision, the Fed has kept the Fed Funds rate steady even as inflation runs stubbornly above target. At the same time, longer-term bond yields have risen appreciably and, in the process, are tightening financial […]
“How To Win The Long Game” is the final chapter of our series and we dig into the rules and guidelines for better investing and portfolio risk management. Chapter 1: Think Like An Investor Chapter 2: Investor Psychology Chapter 3: Why Crashes, Timing & Valuations Matter Chapter 4: Investing Myths Dismantled Chapter 5: Risk Management […]
Heading into the September 16 FOMC meeting, the debate over whether the Fed should raise rates or hold is heated. To help you appreciate the range of views, we present this article as a courtroom exercise. We will let the prosecution make its case for a rate hike, and the defense make its case for […]