Conventional wisdom says that you should invest in stocks when you’re young and then slowly shift into a more “fixed income” strategy as you age in order to reduce the wild swings and to generate the income needed to sustain spending in retirement. But what do you do when that income is nowhere to be found?
We a healthy respect for the market’s ability to make even the wisest of investors look like a fool on a regular basis. So if even the best investors can be made to look like fools over certain periods of time, how can we decipher what makes a skilled or just plain lucky investor?
One of the persistent questions faced by investors is whether stocks are undervalued, overvalued or fairly valued. After all, the “cheapness” of a stock at the time one invests is probably the single most important driver of the long-term result. Unfortunately most of the time ascertaining whether or not valuations are too high or too low isn’t that clear cut.
The number one reason people become a slave to their jobs/career is because they lack the discipline to save money. This week's post is about a young women who bucked the trend and retired at the age of 33 to pursue her dreams of traveling the world.
Zero interest rates are intended to induce growth in borrowing, lending and general risk taking throughout the economy. But what happens when ZIRP doesn’t have its intended effect on economic activity? You move to the next logical extreme: NIRP.
Stocks, bonds, hard assets and absolute return strategies alike have all offered up relatively muted returns in recent years. As we’ve stressed time and time again, it’s important in times like these to take a long-term view and realize that most short-term periods fall somewhere above or below expected averages.
As any casual NBA fan already knows, Kevin Durant was in the news last week with his decision to leave the OKC Thunder for this year's NBA Finals runner-up Golden State Warriors. His decision to abandon his team in order to join a rival was seen as a betrayal to say the least. Why is this move becoming more common place in the NBA?
Last week’s referendum vote in the UK was the culmination of a debate that has been raging for several years on whether Britain should be part of the European Union. The vote in favor of a Brexit sent shock waves throughout the global financial markets which were by and large pricing in a "Remain" outcome.
There has been much to say in recent years about the looming “retirement crisis” in America. We have a general lack of financial preparedness that will become more and more felt as the population ages. The perceived safety net from pension plans across the nation may not be as secure as many retirees had hoped.
Earlier this month more than 170,000 people in 91 countries worldwide sat for one of the three levels of the CFA exam. As a firm with both principals holding the CFA designation we are often asked about the credential, so in today’s post we will take a more in depth look at the designation.
Last Friday the US Department of Labor offered up a shocking, and largely confusing, jobs report for the month of May. Payrolls increased by just 38,000, the lowest in more than five years and a full 120,000 below the consensus expectation of a 158,000 increase.
With a short week and on the heels of last week's post, we have decided to do a re-post on the topic of Decision Analysis. This week's post looks at how to make rational versus emotional decisions in the face of uncertainty.