I stumbled upon a fantastic article about the Tech Bubble and I wanted to share a few key points with you.  This is relevant because current market valuations appear to be very stretched by most metrics.  After an extremely strong 2019 and nearly an 11-year old bull market, investor optimism is quite high.  It is...Read More

Warren Buffett in July, 1999: “If I had to pick the most probable return over the next 20 year, it would be 6%.” Gallup poll in 1999: “Investors expect stocks to return 13-22% annually.” S&P avg. return from 1999-2019: 6.117%. (Source: Vetle Forsland)   As hard as it is to believe, another decade is coming...Read More

There has been a tremendous amount of news over the last few weeks with the phase 1 trade deal with China, progress on the successor to NAFTA, and the Tories winning in the UK by a wide margin.  We don’t want to overthink individual political or economic data-points, which is a mistake that far too many...Read More

Over the weekend, I was reading Barron’s, and there were numerous articles about obtaining enough income in retirement.  The recommendations vary from buying dividend stocks, annuities, and/or bonds.  All of these strategies offer various challenges and risks.   Buying dividend stocks offers income and the potential for capital appreciation.  The problem is that many of these...Read More

To piggyback on our last article discussing the illogical 60/40 portfolio in today’s interest rate environment, I thought I’d pass on this article on how interest rates impact bonds.  Many people don’t realize the immense risks that rising interest rates pose to bonds.  In the inflationary 1970’s, bonds were called “certificates of confiscation” due to...Read More

Historically, it has made reasonable sense for retirees to have a sizable allocation to bonds.  A minimum of 40% was certainly not uncommon.  The logic behind this was that retirees regularly draw from their accounts and are less comfortable with the enhanced volatility that stocks can at times provide.  The supposedly steady income from the...Read More

This morning I read a good article in the WSJ, posted below.  The article discussed that, as a whole, stocks and bonds are pricey by historical measures.  Highly valued stocks and bonds have very likely pulled future returns forward, meaning many investors have less of an opportunity for big gains in the future. “U.S. stocks...Read More

Most financial advice starts with an asset allocation model.  These asset allocation models typically use information from the past, typically the last 30-40 years or so, and then project that into the future.  The big flaw in the process is that they don’t factor in changes in starting conditions and valuations.  For instance, on January...Read More

We’ve written about sequence risk on many occasions in the past.  While most investment projections are based on average returns, the reality is that returns don’t happen that way.  There is a sequence to them, and for those recently retired, or close to retirement, sequence risk is an extremely important consideration. Losses taken early in...Read More

While this optimism ultimately may prove to be valid if interest rates stay this low for many years to come and if earnings continue to grow, there is also a very real chance that many market participants will get badly burned. Most of this year's stock returns for the overall market are coming from Amazon,...Read More