Refinancing a mortgage is about as fun as doing your taxes or getting or getting a flu shot. But even though the process is long and laborious, significant savings can be gained for those willing to take the plunge. We often are asked if it is a good time to refinance and our typical answer is the very unsatisfying “it depends.” https://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/no-time-like-the-present/
Needless to say there is a lot going on in the world right now, and for us here in the US the front page news continues to be Trump’s trade war with China. The day by day developments continue to move markets and affect strategy within the world’s largest corporations. https://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/a-chaos-moment/
The Fed’s aggressive and creative policy response to the financial crisis is one of the most controversial and widely misunderstood financial topics in the modern era. The impact of the Fed’s actions on the real economy is debatable, but few would argue it has had significant influence on the psychology of financial market participants. https://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/the-virtuous-circle/
Last week we reviewed some of the historical context of the US banking system leading up to the creation of the Federal Reserve. In this week’s post we will continue our walk through history by taking a close look at the time directly before and after the Federal Reserve was created in 1913 https://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/shaping-the-course-of-history/
October has been a month that most stock market investors would rather forget. At one point last week, all three major US stock market indices had given up all their year to date returns. The pickup in volatility and pull-back from the recent high has everyone asking where the market is going from here. https://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/where-do-we-go-from-here/
It’s hard to overstate the importance of consumer, investor and business confidence to the health of the overall economy. All of this, in large part, is an aggregate reflection of how people feel. And judging by economic numbers as a whole, people have been feeling pretty good over the past few years. https://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/housing-slowdown-ahead/
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. https://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/the-perils-of-low-volatility/
Investors have been worried about rising rates and what a rising rate environment means for their bond investments. In response, some investors have concluded that it is better to hold individual bonds versus a bond fund.In today’s post, we’ll unpack why it is a misconception to believe that individual bonds are somehow less risky than bond funds. https://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/ignorance-isnt-bliss/
Last week a widely circulated report claimed that the country’s labor market had reached "full employment." Since the report hit the wire less than a week ago the concept of full employment has been the subject of a lot of discourse within the financial world. So what is full employment exactly, and how do we know if we’ve reached this important milestone? https://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/full-employment/
Since the election, investors have been scrambling to understand what a Trump presidency might mean for future of financial markets. Global asset prices had all but priced in a Clinton victory, and the chaos that ensued in futures markets as Trump’s victory took shape throughout the evening reflected a sense of confusion over how to interpret the results. https://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/beach-balls-under-water/
Bonds are an asset class that we have been giving a lot of thought to lately. Bonds are in bondage to the low rates created by loose monetary policy, and the question of what to do about it is one of the more frequent ones we field in client meetings. https://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/bonds-in-bondage/
Last Friday we caught a glimpse of the extent to which financial markets are still addicted to monetary stimulus when stocks, bonds and commodities all tumbled in response to comments made by Fed officials. When everything is grinding upward, moving All Together Now is not a problem, but that sentiment changes quickly when asset classes begin to nosedive in tandem. https://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/all-together-now/
Home prices on a national basis have been on the rise for over four years now. This past June marked the 50th consecutive month of year-over-year national home price appreciation. With all of this positive momentum and the memory of the last housing crisis still fresh in everyone’s minds, many are wondering whether we are in yet another housing bubble. https://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/are-we-in-another-housing-bubble/
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? https://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/are-stocks-the-new-bonds/
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. https://www.seasoninvestments.com/insights/showing-interest-in-valuation/
