ESG Investing: Is it Impactful or Reliable?


ESG investing has been widely discussed in recent years, and many financial institutions have raced to roll out investment products that are designed to support the ESG agenda.    ESG stands for Environmental, Social & Corporate Governance.   While that is what the acronym stands for, what does it actually mean in reality?   In fact, there is…

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2023 Tax & Retirement Plans Update


Every year or two since 2001, there are annual increases to IRA contributions that are adjusted due to inflation.  However, IRA contributions are not the only thing that is adjusted for inflation.  Many components in the tax code are adjusted that can impact various aspects of retirement planning. Some of the important new limits and…

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What Does a Recession Mean for Investors?


In recent weeks we’ve heard more and more talk of the U.S. entering into a recession.  As expected, many investors are concerned about the implications of a recession on their investment portfolio.   In order to understand what might happen in the future, it’s helpful to look at what has happened in past recessions. Recessions happen…

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I-Bonds: What Are They, And Do They Make Sense?


Considering the recent high inflation environment where the March 2022 CPI figure was 8.5%, and in 2021 the average inflation was 4.7%, savers have rightfully so been looking for a safe place to put their money where its purchasing power doesn’t get eroded from the effects of inflation.   To make matters worse, savings rates on…

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Losing Money Safely: The Risks of Being Too Conservative


Market volatility is something that can cause investors a great deal of stress.  Losing money is something that nobody enjoys.  Yet we all enjoy making money when assets prices rise.   Paul Newman’s character “Fast Eddie Felson” in the 1961 film “The Hustler” reprised in the 1986 film “The Color of Money” once said that “Money…

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Value vs Growth Investing: Is the Trend Changing?


Reversion to the mean is a phrase often used in investing.  It is the statistical phenomenon stating that the greater the deviation of a random variant from its mean, the greater the probability that the next measured variate will deviate less far from its mean.   In other words, an extreme event is likely to be…

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Military Conflicts: What is the Impact on the Market?


We often say that financial markets are the equivalent to a massive financial ecosystem in which no one event or action tells the entire story.   However, there are often singular events that can have a more substantial impact on the behavior and price action across the markets.  Sometimes these are positive events, and sometimes negative.  …

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Social Security: Will the Gov’t Run Out of Money?


Will Social Security be there when I retire or will it run out, this is one of the more common concerns heard from clients in financial planning circles for years.   The question is, should you legitimately be concerned?  The answer is both YES and NO.   The concern about your Social Security payments ceasing because…

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Inflation Today: What is it Really?


In February of 2015, we wrote an article about the topic of inflation that tried to address not only some of the concerns about inflation, but also some of the confusing and seemingly misleading inflation data. Particularly, how the measures of inflation have changed over the years to reflect what may be a very inaccurate…

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Opportunity Cost: What it Means to You


Opportunity cost is defined as the potential benefit an investor misses out on when choosing one alternative over another.   Every investor can likely think of an example of something that they once owned and sold at the wrong time or planned to buy and chose not to do so.   Some of those examples can be…

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