Insights

Of Pianos, Mattresses, and Light Switches - Why it is Especially Challenging to Manage Assets in this Environment

In negotiations, it can be valuable to create the impression that you are willing to take bigger risks than your adversary.  Oftentimes,...

Market thoughts March 4, 2025 by Mark Carlton, CFA®

Summary With dividends reinvested, the S&P 500 gained close to 25% in 2024, but only 2.4% [1]  of that came in the final three months. ...

Trademark Blog Post – December 11, 2024: The U.S. stock market surged after the November election.  Investors remembered that in the...

Summary The S&P 500 gained 4.3% last quarter, and 15.3% in the first half of the year[1].  That is the good news.  The bad news was that...

Follow-ups and New Thoughts: My first investment thought today is that TIPs just became more interesting. TIPs started to fade as...

Follow-ups and New Thoughts: Bill Hinch is a 35-year investment veteran who now runs the First Eagle Small Cap Opportunity Fund after a...

Follow-ups and New Thoughts: 1) November Employment Report The number of jobs created in November (210,000) may have been a...

Follow-ups and New Thoughts: So little happened this summer that every time I sat down to write about the concern of the moment, it...

Follow-ups and New Thoughts: 1) On July 7th the 10-year Treasury traded at less than 1.30% for a short time before closing near 1.32%....

Follow-ups and New Thoughts: 1) Everything revolves around interest rates. On June 1st the 10-year treasury rose from 1.58% to 1.61%, and...

Follow-ups and New Thoughts: 1) The decline in the 10-year bond yield from 1.74% on March 31st to as low as 1.53% on April 15th has done...

Follow-ups and New Thoughts: 1) Emerging Markets are still exciting for the long run, but surging interest rates are not helpful for this...

Emerging Market Asset Allocation It would be unthinkable to put together an investment portfolio today that did not include Apple,...

The Fed Not much to say about the U.S. stock market overall.  I’ve been reading a lot of analogies lately, so here is mine:  Imagine...

Investors are herd creatures.  We can’t help it; 100,000 years of programming is hard to unlearn.  That said, what enabled our ancestors...

Exactly one month ago (February 19, 2020), the S&P 500 made a high just above 3393 before closing at 3384.  We didn’t know it at the...

THE NEW GOLD RUSH Welcome to the new gold rush.  There is a feeling in the investment world that we are in an Age of Disruption that is...

Summary 2019 closed on a high note for stocks as interest rate cuts fueled a speculative boom which has continued into 2020.  Against a...