When we first launched Season Investments there were very few investment options with a trend following discipline being offered to the general public. Today, there a number of different trend following funds. Although we are very proud of MarketVANE, we realize that value can be gained by holding different fruits with the same roots.
As you’re probably already aware, 2017 ended up being a fantastic year for the stock market. But what defined the year even more than all the fanfare, in our opinion, was the complete absence of volatility. Gains were generated in a slow, steady grind higher that might appropriately be described a consistent, positive “Slowmentum”.
The other week I came across an article on what is quickly becoming my favorite blog entitled The Difference Between Amateurs and Professionals. The post outlines at least two dozen differences in the way amateurs versus professionals think and act. In this week’s post we are going to highlight some of the key differences between amateurs and professionals.
Year-end giving is a common theme for us and our clients, both because of the general spirit of the holiday as well as the calendar year tax deadline for charitable contributions. Structuring gifts to take full advantage of tax breaks is only prudent, as it reduces the “net cost” to you of supporting your favorite charity and empowers you to consider multiplying your gift and impact.
There are many different ways to define risk when it comes to investing. But one risk that is often overlooked and rarely ever talked about is sequence risk. What is sequence risk you might ask? It is the risk of experiencing bad investment outcomes at the wrong time.
While we will likely have more to say on tax reform in the coming weeks, we’d like to narrow in on a couple particular elements of the proposed reform in this post: the increase of the standard deduction, along with the related changes to the personal exemption and child tax credit.
Super accommodative monetary policy has been necessary to spur economic recovery and ensure markets don’t fall into a deflationary spiral. But these same policies which have kept interest rates at record lows for so long are creating vulnerabilities in the economy as debt levels continue to rise.
Giving someone “good advice” is rarely enough. Most of us already know what we should do, or what the right answer is…yet often times we still do the opposite. Advice moves from being “good” to being “effective” when it is tailored and delivered in such a way that actually spurs the behavioral change needed to attain the desired outcomes.
The prospect of major tax reform is obviously playing a very prominent role on the political stage right now. Given the current focus, we thought we’d write about a widely debated symbol of supply side economic theory - the Laffer Curve.
In order to generate returns in excess of the risk free rate (think FDIC insured savings accounts at banks which are as close to “risk free” as you can get), one will have to take on some degree of risk, which could lead to a loss of principal. As the saying goes, “you can’t have your cake and eat it too.” Or can you?
Since we can’t predict the future with any level of confidence, we chose to take a more humble approach to investing which spreads risk across as many different, non-correlated investments as possible as well as using trend following techniques to provide some downside protection on our publicly traded investments.
I recently read Michael Lewis’ new book entitled The Undoing Project which is all about the history of behavioral economics, which is a discipline that has created a paradigm shift in my understanding of human behavior. In this week’s post we will share one of the many stories from the book and explain how it relates to investment decisions.
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