The Bigger Picture
“The business of journalism is to sell news everyday even when there is no news of consequence.” Nick Murray, 1993 It is very easy (in fact, too easy) to fall into the trap of thinking that what we hear on the news is the only news that really matters to our lives or our investments, or that the latest government policy is what really matters to our lives and our investments. But is the daily...
Read MoreLifeboat Drill
“I must state at the outset that I have no idea when the next correction will occur. This piece does not constitute a prediction that the current uptrend is about to end—only that will end. Jeffrey Ross, Serious Money Talks, December 2013 Our December 2013 newsletter raised the topic of Lifeboat Drills, a discussion to help prepare us for the next inevitable correction in the markets. As my...
Read MoreAfter Digitization
A couple of months ago I wrote about digitization, the process of converting something into binary code that can be read by a machine. This process is happening everywhere and to virtually everything. It cannot be stopped or avoided. Anything that can be digitized will be digitized. So what happens after something is digitized? What happens next is a growth process that travels along an...
Read More“Bonus” Points with Institutional Shares
As we approach the third anniversary of our firm’s transition to a fee-only Registered Investment Adviser, investment accounts are beginning to accumulate what I think of as bonus points. These bonus points derive from using the institutional-class shares we now recommend instead of the retail-class shares we used to recommend. By way of background, remember that when we transitioned accounts...
Read MoreThe Retirement Trick
I came across new data about our changing work and retirement habits, showing that in the two decades between 1990 and 2010, older Americans have increasingly continued working. The percentage of 65-69 year-olds in the labor force has increased from 21% to 31.5%. The percentage of 70-74 year-olds has increased from 11.3% to 18%. Even the percentage of 75-79 year-olds has increased from 6.1% to...
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