With the state primaries in full swing, election coverage will be in our faces for the next eight-plus months. Election years are definitely not one of my favorite years. The non-stop coverage is quite fatiguing. Allow me to add to the fatigue but from an investment market perspective. Two years ago it seemed a foregone …

I had a really interesting conversation at a meeting yesterday with several individuals employed in different industries. The topic of probate came up along with ways to avoid probate. Before I go any further, let me start by saying that a lot of us don’t give sufficient attention to estate planning issues. We may have …

I’ve been finding many people are becoming increasingly confident in their ability to manage their own investments. Somewhat surprisingly, many of these people are picking individual stocks and aren’t diversifying outside of stocks. In other words, 100% of their portfolios are invested in stocks, most often U.S. stocks exclusively. The level of overconfidence appears to …

Clearly, we’ve had a tremendous run in stocks but it hasn’t been without a chorus of very intelligent naysayers who have made many astute observations and convincing arguments. However, their predictions and their timing have been wrong. I don’t mean to be critical because many valid points have been made. But the trend and rising …

So US stocks were broadly up around 30% in 2019. As we’ve discussed before, valuations are a reflection of price relative to some fundamental metric such as earnings or cash flow. I came across this chart today. I’ve seen variations of it in multiple places in recent weeks. It’s worth sharing simply because profit growth …

Another interesting chart I’ve come across in the past few weeks looks at the Dow over the past 95 years. In particular, the chart focuses on the trend in the index over the past 70 years. Note that the index hasn’t broken the top or bottom lines of the channel. The Dow bounced along the …

Interesting chart from SunTrust Private Wealth Management on stock performance in years after years following a year in which the market gained 20% or more. Twenty percent of the time the return has been negative historically while 80% of the time it has been positive. Those are decent odds but in reality they don’t mean …

The new year is a time when many of us focus on the upcoming year and what we would like to accomplish. For many of us, we plan to accomplish our objectives by setting goals. The problem with goals is they can be fleeting. One of the best examples is setting weight loss goals. We …