Dear Clients and Friends, The first quarter of 2025 is behind us and we wish all of you a happy start to the spring. Technology stocks remain under pressure and the Volatility Index (VIX), or as some call the fear gauge for the stock market, remains elevated. 2024 was a remarkably stable year in the …
Category Archives: Financial Planning
Reasons to Stay the Course
Dear Clients and Friends, As volatility in the markets pick up we wanted to send out some information to help bring these events into context and hopefully allay to some degree the unnerving nature of these movements. There has been much discussion about the Nasdaq, which is an index of technology companies, and how it …
Interest Rates, M2, and Central Bank Balance Sheets
You may have heard financial pundits say the stock market follows the bond market, and in many ways they are right. The correlation between interest rate movements on the 10-year treasury and the broad stock indices is as strong as ever. It works like this. Rates go up on the 10-year treasury, bond and stock …
Continue reading “Interest Rates, M2, and Central Bank Balance Sheets”
The Start of 2024
The start to 2024 has been full of excitement with the main stock indices reaching new all time highs (something that hasn’t happened since 2021). As we enter the beginning of February, many folks are wondering what to do in this circumstance along with a divisive presidential election and potential rate cuts that are forecasted …
The Magnificent 7
As we close out 2023 there were many unexpected twists along the way, but the biggest surprise was the majority of the returns for the major stock indices (Nasdaq, S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial) all were heavily dependent on the performance of seven stocks, coined The Magnificent Seven by Jim Cramer, earlier in the …
A Little History on Bull and Bear
Dear clients and friends, As we enter the last quarter of the year, volatility is picking up in both the stock and bond markets, primarily due to rising treasury yields and renewed concern about higher for longer rates of inflation and soaring national debt. Historically, September is a difficult month for the stock market and …
Direct Indexing
Dear clients and friends, We hope each of you is enjoying the summer months and a more stable market environment. As we progress further into the second half of the year we wanted to provide a quick update on the markets as well as introduce a concept called “Direct Indexing” which is becoming a bigger …
The Importance of Stress Testing
When we help people construct their retirement plans, we highlight the importance of stress testing different factors that could have a negative impact on financial estimates