November 2020 -The election is now over and while not officially finalized, we are working off the assumption that Biden has won. Following the election, the stock market rallied as it appeared that a Democrat Presidency would be met with Republicans retaining the Senate and picking up seats in the House. This split Congress scenario will likely result in a continuation of many of the current policies, namely lower taxes that have been bullish for stocks. However, as the votes were tallied, the scenario changed somewhat as Georgia will have a runoff for both its Senate seats in early January....

August 2020 - With the stock market back to pre-COVID levels, we are often asked, “How can this be possible?”, given that Q2 GDP was down 33% and we have a 10% unemployment rate. There is often a disparity between what is happening on “Main Street” vs. how “Wall Street” is doing but this latest difference somehow feels worse since all of us have had to deal with COVID, the lockdowns, homeschooling, and everything else which has been a result of the pandemic.   There are some plausible answers to why this bifurcation is happening, namely, the markets are forward looking, there is...

June 2020 - A little more than a year ago, we published a note discussing the future of retail and the evolution of the industry.  With the onset of the COVID-19 virus in the United States and the required closure of non-essential stores, many changes that were already under way began to accelerate meaningfully.  Grocery delivery went from a luxury of millennials to a healthcare necessity for those over 50.  Large chains had already been slowly gaining market share, but the virus exposed the real gap in technology and infrastructure between those with the capital to invest and those without...

March 2020 - Over the past 10 years, passive investing has been a successful investment strategy.  A $10,000 investment in an S&P 500 index fund on January 1, 2010 would have been worth $35,666 on December 31, 2019.  That equates to an annualized return of 13.56%, far exceeding the index’s long-run historical return of approximately 10.00%.  Clearly, capturing 100% of the market’s upside during this long, bull market run has worked out well for investors.  Why worry about downside risk, when passive investing generates these types of returns?  Why look to active management, when only a small handful of managers...

November 2018 - Over the past few months, equity markets have been experiencing an increase in volatility. While the daily ups and down can be unsettling, it’s appropriate to step back, assess the situation and gain some perspective in order to avoid panic. For much of the past few years we have become accustomed to the lack of volatility and so it is easy to forget that volatility is a normal part of market behavior. Since the 2008 market bottom, we’ve had 23 corrections where the market fell at least 5% and seven times where the market fell more than...