This week we want to discuss interest rates and, more specifically, why a Federal Reserve pause does not necessarily mean that all interest rates are about to decline. At its July meeting, the Federal Reserve left the federal funds target

This week, investors received an important update on the artificial intelligence investment boom. Alphabet reported outstanding second-quarter operating results. Total revenue increased 24%, Google Cloud revenue increased 82%, and the company’s operating margin expanded from 32% to 34%. Yet, the

This week we want to talk about earnings. That may sound less exciting than the other stories investors have been following recently. Over the past several weeks, markets have had plenty to digest: geopolitical risk, oil-price volatility, interest rates, the

Currently, the news is full of articles proclaiming economic turmoil and forecasting recession. Just this month, we’ve noted stories on rising inflation, gas price shocks, frozen home sales, increasing unemployment and record consumer debt defaults. Yet, despite all of these

This week, the stock market again hit new all-time highs due to strong corporate earnings reports.  Since the Iran War began, we’ve been saying that investors would look past the conflict after the initial emotional reaction and refocus on strong

Over the last ten days, the stock market has rallied on hopes of a quick end to the Iran conflict and optimism that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates as expected in spite of rising inflation due to higher

This week we wanted to focus on private credit, which has faced a difficult few months in the press. As you know, we have private credit exposure that we continue to believe is well positioned. That said, when an asset

This week we’ll address the elephant in the room – Iran. As we predicted last week, the US attack on Iran has produced a lot of volatility with a corresponding surge in oil prices. US stock market volatility increased by

This week we want to address the narrative of a US Dollar collapse.  Last year the USD declined from 110 to 98 (an 11% decline in value versus the broad currency basket).  This decline has a group of people warning

If you don’t know, today Gold (-10%), Silver (-27%) and Platinum (-18%) experienced a spectacular crash event.  These were the largest single day price drops we can remember in precious metals markets and appear to us, to be targeted attacks

This week we want to discuss the Venezuelan Oil Industry.  Since the US strike on Venezuela, WTI oil prices are up about $2 (3.5%) to $59.70.  Some pundits are hailing this latest development as a boon for the US and

This week we wanted to focus on an investment in your portfolio — our position in legacy RMBS. What exactly are legacy RMBS? Legacy Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities (RMBS) are bonds backed by pools of residential mortgage loans, where investors receive

The Global Stock Market ended the week up 14.7% year-to-date.  So far this year, international stock markets (+24.8%) are outperforming the S&P 500 (+11.5%).  Since the bottom of the Trump Tariff Panic in April, the Global Stock Market has rallied

August has opened with a bang, with stock markets selling off and fear reasserting itself in financial markets.  Today we want to share some context for today’s sell off. In technical analysis, there is this concept of “Overbought or Oversold”.

The Global Stock Markets regained all-time high levels this week.  In just a little over two and a half months, investors have gone from utter fear and panic, pushing markets down 20% to euphoria and new record levels.  Just another

This week we’ll discuss the recent changes we made to the public equity holdings in portfolios, but first a quick review of the wild month of April.  From April 1st to today, May 2nd, the S&P 500 is actually up

We continue to see a lot of misinformation about private investments so let’s try to separate fact from fiction. Last week an article was published in the Wall Street Journal that criticized private investments with a lot of misinformation. Coincidentally,

This week we are going to discuss the “End Game” for the Trump tariff policies, but first we’ll provide some context for what is happening in various financial markets. Financial Markets The S&P 500 Index is down 17% from its

This week we want to outline the investment case for making an allocation to Private Equity in client portfolios. Over the past four years, we have invested in Private Credit and Private Real Estate markets but have avoided Private Equity

As I write this note, the MSCI World Stock Market Index is down 3% from its all-time highs. For some reason, that has caused panic among investors. Year-to-date, the global stock market is up 1.6%. So, this week, we’d like

Today was a tough day on Wall Street, but the market is basically back to where it was 10 days ago.  So instead of addressing the stock sell off today, we’d like to discuss the outlook for inflation. The latest

This week was full of bombshell announcements which spiked volatility and had investors rethinking many core assumptions.  If you haven’t been paying attention here are a few of the major news items that rattled markets: Monday morning the world woke up

his week we want to briefly touch on the surging sentiment in the US stock market.  This week the Euphoriameter reached the highest level in my career. In addition, the Consumer Board’s Consumer Confidence in the Stock Market Index also

Time to address the elephant in the room—the election is next week.  Today we want to share with you the current probabilities for the election outcome.  These probabilities are what are currently priced into the financial markets.   If the

With the global stock market at its all-time highs, we want to highlight the current valuation dynamic and a few of the forces driving US stock prices. The current forward price to earnings multiple of the MSCI All World Stock Index

As you know, last week the central bank cut the Fed Fund Rate by 50bps.  This week we want to review how financial markets have reacted to this cut.   As you might expect, the S&P 500 (US Large Cap

The Global Stock Market Index is down just over 3.5% this week.  Why the sudden shift in momentum?  Well, this week investors began to reassess their assumptions on the path of Fed rate cuts. Just three days ago, the Fed

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell delivered a speech in which he said the following: “The time has come for policy to adjust… The direction of travel is clear, and the timing and pace of rate cuts will depend on incoming

This week we want to touch on two topics: first, the current stock market pullback and second, our recent shift in public fixed income holdings. The stock market has had a rough couple of days, continuing its recent pullback since

In the last few years there have been many economists and pundits arguing that we’ve entered a long era of rising interest rates.  Recently James Grant, editor of the Interest Rate Observer, was asked his outlook and gave the following

This week we want to briefly discuss the Chinese stock market.  Since the beginning of 2021, their stock market has declined by almost 50%. While China has the second largest economy in the world, their stock market now accounts for

For about a year now, investors have been expecting a collapse in apartment values along with a corresponding decrease in rents.  We’ve argued against this thesis, expecting rents to hold up and support multi-family housing prices. Today we’d like to share

The 10 Year US Treasury Bond Yield brushed 5%.  This is the highest yield on that bond since July 2007.  If bond yields remain at these elevated levels, this will be the third consecutive year of losses in that critical

This week want to highlight some of the impacts higher interest rates are having on the economy.   The Fed has been raising rates now for over a year and a half. They have increased their overnight lending rate from 0%

Fitch (one of the big three Ratings Agencies—the others being S&P and Moody’s) reduced its credit rating on US bonds from AAA (the highest possible credit rating) to AA+ (the second highest credit rating).  The company cited “a deteriorating fiscal

This morning the United States Supreme Court ruled against the Biden Administration’s plan to forgive up to $430 Billion in student loan debt.  In a 6-3 decision, the court disagreed with the White House that the proposed forgiveness plan was

This week we wanted to discuss the debt ceiling, a topic that has been getting a lot of attention lately. We have written on this topic before, but felt it was worth revisiting. The debt ceiling/limit is the total amount

Well, a lot has happened over the last week making this week’s note a bit challenging.  So, today we’ll write about what the government has done to mitigate the runs at small and regional banks and what has happened as

Today we are going to address the “elephant in the room” in the stock market—Bank Stocks.   Since February 7th, 2023, the Banking Sector stocks have reversed from up 13.5% ytd to down 8.5% ytd.  Most of this reversal has

January has been an interesting month.  Despite many warning signs of an impending recession, the global stock market managed to rise by just over 6% during the period.  So, what is driving the recent upward swing in stock prices? This

This year has been challenging and not just in financial markets.  The major mood in the world seems to be one of exhaustion and fear.  That is understandable given all that’s happened during 2022. Some of the more depressing items

This week we want to briefly review how the consumer is holding up in a weakening economy with high inflation.  The best way to get a sense for the consumer’s health is by looking at retail revenue growth and credit

  Over the last few weeks, many people have asked us, “When do you think the stock market will bottom?”  We usually avoid these types of questions, as answering them implies a level of foresight that humans just don’t generally possess.  However,

This week we thought we’d better discuss the stock market and our latest thinking.  In the past two weeks, the S&P 500 has declined by nearly 10% (as of this writing) and is back down to the lows for the

This week we thought we’d better discuss the stock market and our latest thinking.  In the past two weeks, the S&P 500 has declined by nearly 10% (as of this writing) and is back down to the lows for the

So far, 2022 has been the worst year for fixed income markets since the Great Depression.  The US Aggregate Bond Index (our fixed income benchmark) has lost 10.75% through August with the Global Aggregate Bond Index down 20.4%. Fortunately, our

There has been much discussion in the market this year regarding the rise in interest rates. It can be seen almost everywhere – The average 30-year fixed rate mortgage, which started 2022 at 3.11%, hit a high of 5.81% in

Well, the first half of 2022 is in the books and for the broad financial markets and for passive investors it has been an absolute disaster.  The most widely followed US Large Cap Stock index—the S&P 500—put up the second

This week I want to jump into the weeds with you and outline our current thinking on the stock market.  On May 13th, I wrote: “The S&P 500 is now trading at 17.3x 2022 estimated eps vs its historical average

In our Weekly Thoughts note from 11/19/2021, we explained our thesis for weak consumer discretionary spending in 2022 based on a surge in the prices of necessary spending categories.  At the conclusion of that note, we said: “All in, we

Barring a huge rally Friday, this will be the sixth consecutive week of stock market losses.  That doesn’t happen often.  As I mentioned last week, we’ve been sniffing around markets looking for value.  At the beginning of the year, the

This week we want to discuss the recent decision by the Biden administration to release approximately 180 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve – why are they doing this, what will be the impact and the potential

We monitor many different data points to determine the vulnerability of equity markets. One of those items is the buying or selling done by insiders – people that have information on companies beyond what is given to the public.  Insiders

The last several weeks, there has been a lot of chatter over the looming potential government shutdown and debt ceiling resolution. We thought we would spend this week reviewing each separately and their potential effects on investment markets. We will

This week we wanted to discuss a question that almost every investor has faced, or will face, in their lifetime – “I have a lot of capital gains in investment XYZ, should I sell?” We’re not talking about whether investment

This week volatility came back after nearly a month of very calm markets. The VIX (the volatility index) jumped from 15 to nearly 21. Most of this was driven by two key factors. First, the Federal Reserve met this week

This week the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) calculation for April. Many looked at the headline inflation number of 4.16% and panicked. Stocks and bonds sold off in the first three days of the

In our February 19th note we discussed the current unfavorable risk/reward in High Yield Bonds. This week, however, we are going to talk about the private credit markets. First, it’s important to understand some of the basics of a corporate

Normally at this point in the economic cycle, investment managers would be transitioning fixed income portfolios to more risky investments in junk bonds. This week we would like to highlight why we haven’t done that and discuss the current risk

With the recent Democratic sweep of Congress, fears of inflation have elevated in financial markets.  Every day on the financial news, someone is arguing that we will soon be faced with runaway inflation due to reckless fiscal and monetary policies. 

This week we wanted to discuss a topic that has been on the mind of some of our clients. Qualified Opportunity Zones (QOZs) and 1031 Exchanges. Quite simply, these two vehicles are methods of deferring, reducing, or eliminating capital gains

We’ve been trying to learn as much as possible about the new Covid-19 vaccines and how they might impact the economy going forward. The science is fascinating. For years, scientists have been dreaming of using messenger RNA (mRNA) to combat

This week we want to dig into the energy sector. This is an industry that is universally despised today. This is in large part due to the fact that the energy component of the S&P 500 has underperformed the broader

We’ve had some interesting discussions about inflation this past week and wanted to share a bit more on this topic. This week we want to discuss the impact of inflation on stock prices and returns. Many assume without looking at

This week we want to briefly discuss a topic that many people have been asking about – Inflation. This is an enormously complex topic with so many moving parts, so we can’t really do it justice in a Weekly Thoughts

This week we want to highlight the US banking system and the potential for good long-term returns in this space.  While many sectors of the stock market have shrugged off fears of recession, the large banks continue to trade at

This month has been historic for global financial markets. A combination of extremely high equity valuations in the US, spreading panic due to the coronavirus and an oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia have created the fastest market