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Transitions - Wealth Planning and Market Insights

As an advocate for financial education, our newsletter helps educate you and your family on the fundamentals of investing, so you know what you own and why. We believe financial knowledge helps you gain clarity and confidence in achieving your financial goals.

Only several weeks ago, the stock markets were careening lower. Even as an upward movement began, most saw this "V" as a short-term bounce. The technical thinking was that the market needed more time trading in the lower end of this trading range. The strength of the recent decline, combined with weakening breadth, had market sentiment feeling bearish. Most investment professionals were surprised by the market recovery.

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Are we in a correction or have we entered a bear market? One answer is in the financial text books that define a decline off the highs of 10% as a correction, and a 20% decline as a bear market. Such clear-cut definitions make news reporting easy.

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The recent hack into the Marriott/Starwood Hotels database impacted up to 500 million customers worldwide. To place this in perspective, the population in the United States is 325 million, so it is reasonable to assume a widespread impact on this data breach. We now all live in a post data breach world. So, a quick review of ways to protect your privacy seems the best way to start the New Year.

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Hooray, they won! Now what? Except for the winning politicians, everyone else continues their daily tasks. Commerce continues, life continues, all with the saving grace we will be spared from receiving further political advertisements and mailers.

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A Proverb for Your Investment Strategy - October 17, 2018 In a recent conversation about differing cultures, I was struck by the wisdom of a simple proverb I had never heard before. Yet it is something I have been practicing throughout my entire career of rendering investment advice to individual investors.

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Is it a Vice President, a Managing Director, A Portfolio Manager, or a Salesman? You won't know who is minding your money until you start asking questions.

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More than half the effort in successful investing is to avoid making big mistakes. Everyone can make a mistake, but the key is knowing which stocks are more likely to fail and then avoid investing in them. As portfolio managers, we choose not to invest in many ideas we uncover to avoid making big mistakes.

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Since 2008, the Federal Reserve Board (Fed) has distorted interest rates by lowering its benchmark interest rate to zero. The, it agreed to print money to revive the credit markets. They experimented with "quantitative easing" where the Fed purchased Treasury bonds, mortgage backed and US Agency securities in the open market. This buying quadrupled the size of the Fed's balance sheet to over $4 trillion, which is large even by government standards.

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There are points in your life where it makes sense to set up a trust. We see credit shelter trusts that are set up to take care of loved ones after your passing. For two main reasons, I am seeing a resurgence of revocable trusts.

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Time after time, we see a stock price immediately move 5% to 10% just after a company news release. Did the company suddenly become a different company from yesterday? Rarely is this the case. Rather, we see the effect of computers "parsing the news", picking out a few words to trigger orders to buy or sell shares. It seems the fastest computer wins. Or does it?

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