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Living Healthy, Wealthy & Wise: Navigating three stages of life and multigenerational wealth

The firm’s Healthy, Wealthy & Wise Collection is a 10-year research initiative and three-book series that highlights success stories of how individuals have reconciled their financial abundance with the values and relationships that matter most in their lives. The first, Raised Healthy, Wealthy & Wise (2014), focuses on helping parents to raise grounded children amid […]

March 12, 2024

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Investment Insights

The Election.

It matters. Just be cautious of repositioning an investment portfolio as if you know exactly how it matters. The people have spoken. At 5:34 AM The Associated Press declared Trump the winner of Wisconsin’s 10 electoral college votes, enough to push the former President past the 270-majority mark. While probably not officially meeting the definition […]

November 6, 2024

Q3 2024 Market Review: An Upward Flight…With Three Air Pockets

Market Recap Markets enjoyed another notable rise in prices this quarter. If you went to sleep on June 30 and woke up ninety days later, you would have noticed a seemingly smooth and pleasant rise in your brokerage statements. The S&P 500 was up 5.9% while small-cap stocks performed even better, with the Russell 2000 […]

October 2, 2024

Q2 2024 Market Review: Higher interest rates should cool the consumer. If only it were so simple.

When the Fed started one of the most aggressive rate hikes in U.S. history, it was supposed to rein in the American consumer. And it has. But not with the vigor and speed that the Fed and the capital markets expected. The U.S. consumer has remained remarkably resilient. We think the Fed and the market […]

July 3, 2024

Canaries in the Coal Mine: Credit Markets are Sending Positive Signals

Market participants are hyper-focused on looking for clues as to whether the Federal Reserve will be able to orchestrate either a “soft landing” or “no landing” for the economy. The credit markets may have just given a clue. One typical metric looked at as a forecast for the economy is the spread in the US high-yield corporate bond market (calculated as […]

May 7, 2024

A Differentiated Approach to Direct Indexing

Introduction We are big fans of ETFs. But our research shows that investors may see even better after-tax outcomes through direct indexing separately managed accounts (SMAs). The financial industry has also recognized this potential, and the marketing hype has reached a fever pitch. So we yet again must take a skeptical approach as we do […]

April 23, 2024

Funding Private Investment Programs for Taxable Investors

Written by Ben Daly, CFA, CAIA, CFP®, Senior Investment Advisor and Ryan Bachur, CFA, Senior Portfolio Manager For over three generations of professional investment management, rules, guidelines, and heuristics were developed for endowments, foundations, pensions, and other tax-exempt institutions. They became the “law of the land,” ensconced in the investment and finance curricula taught around […]

April 9, 2024

Q1 2024 Market Review: When Good News…Was Just Plain Good News

Market Recap There are always odd times in investing when what’s happening in the economy is completely disconnected from what’s happening in the capital markets. This was not one of those times! For the first quarter of this year, good news in the economy actually translated to good news in the risk markets. The U.S. […]

April 3, 2024

Reforming Corporate Japan: From Carrot to Stick

After 12 years of polite incentives – the carrot approach – to get better stock returns out of Japanese companies, the Tokyo Stock Exchange is finally breaking out the stick. And it just might work. For the past 12 years, Japanese policymakers have endeavored to break the country out of a long financial malaise dating […]

March 14, 2024

Here’s An Investment Theme: Be Wary of Investment Themes

A thematic ETF’s investment thesis sounds compelling. It’s an obvious growth story. And its name is so darn clever. Which means only one thing. Hold onto your wallet. Thematic ETFs – Exchange Traded Funds, or baskets of stocks and companies focused on a narrow theme, trend, or concept – tap into our deep desire for […]

February 29, 2024

2023 Market Review: Asset Prices Climbed the Wall of Worry

Market Recap At the beginning of 2023 (and a few months in), the mood in the markets was downright dour. 2022 had not been kind – with both equities and bonds suffering some of their worst returns in over a decade – and the conventional view of the future was equally bleak. The laundry list […]

January 8, 2024

Charlie Munger: Overconfidence is Everywhere

For those that follow the financial news, you no doubt heard about last week’s passing of Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s friend and investment partner at Berkshire Hathaway for almost sixty years. Financial websites, blogs, podcasts, LinkedIn, and other social media are jam-packed with remembrances, all sharing quotes and anecdotes from Charlie’s life, and all are […]

December 5, 2023

A Tale of Two Headlines

Same data. Two very different headlines. One to scare you. One to calm you. Guess which one gets used? In the last few days, four different colleagues at my firm sent me links to some financial blogs and posts that referenced the chart below from FRED – Federal Reserve Economic Data, the official website of […]

November 16, 2023