Recovery? The markets fully recovered from Covid in the third quarter with the S&P500 back to plus 4% for the year. While the economy hasn’t recovered, the markets are enjoying the Federal Reserve’s efforts to maintain liquidity in the banking system. You can see from the charts below that the Fed has increased the size […]
Bright Side of Life Things are a bit chaotic in the world these days and it’s not just Covid-19. We’re at the end of a long term economic and social cycle and the imbalances from this cycle need to be rectified before a sense of normalcy will return to our lives. The history books are […]
The Secure Act was signed into law on 12/20/19. Some key points include: Beginning in 2020 and beyond, removal of the 70 ½ contribution age limit to traditional IRA’s. However, if you were age 70 ½ or older as of 12/31/19 you are restricted from making a 2019 contribution. RMD (Required Minimum Distribution) on an […]
Going Viral The Covid-19 virus changes everything. Our economy is going to morph dramatically thanks to the ineptitude of the Chinese Communist government as well as the slow response by Western leaders. Fortunately, we’ve known for years that our old economy was unsustainable which is why we are far along in planning for how to […]
Y2K Redux 2019 was a great year to be in the stock market with the S&P500 returning 30.43%. It went from being a very good year to a great year thanks to the Federal Reserve injecting $500 billion into the banking system because they were afraid that current troubles in the banking system would spill […]
Truckin’ In 1970, the Grateful Dead gave us the song “Truckin” with the memorable line “lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it’s been”. It’s been a weird ten years since the “Great Recession” as central bank interventions and experiments in monetary policy have temporarily changed the way markets function. So, it’s […]
Ugly! The fourth quarter was an ugly one in the capital markets, although some of the losses have been erased so far in 2019. Compared to the market averages, we had a very good year but even with our safe-haven assets, we experienced weakness in some of our positions in December. A number of pundits […]
The US Remains Strong What a difference two weeks can make? We went from new highs in the stock market to only being up a small amount for the year. There are reasons to be concerned and while some people are starting to panic, I don’t believe the time is quite right to call the […]
Just Waiting The stock market has eked out a small gain for the first six months of the year. Apart from a few massively overvalued technology stocks, the majority of stocks in the market are roughly flat to lower at the midpoint of the year. It’s as if most investors are waiting for something to […]
