Blog

08 Jan 2016 Time For A Risk Check?

Posted at 13:19h in The Friday Brief by Sam Bass Jr.

It’s been a rocky start for 2016, continuing the choppiness that started in August. US stocks as measured by the CRSP US Total Market Index are down roughly 5% since the beginning of the year and almost 9% since the last market peak on June 22^nd.

18 Dec 2015 What Do Rising Rates Mean For Stock and Bond Investors?

Posted at 15:02h in The Friday Brief by Sam Bass Jr.

First let's celebrate the fact that Janet Yellen actually did what she said she was going to do - she raised rates before the year was out. Investors love certainty and the Fed Chair just improved her certainty rating substantially - how refreshing.

11 Dec 2015 Beacon 3.0

Posted at 15:06h in The Friday Brief by Sam Bass Jr.

When I started Beacon almost 20 years ago, I wanted to do one thing for my clients: Grow their wealth faster than they could grow it elsewhere. That's still true today, but everything else has changed.

04 Dec 2015 Would You Like to Outperform 80% of Other Investors?

Posted at 11:51h in The Friday Brief by Sam Bass Jr.

The obvious answer to the title question is 'yes of course,' but only one in five actually accomplishes it. Here's the fascinating part - anyone can join the elite 20% any time they wish and outperform 80% of other investors as long as the 80% continues doing what they are doing. By now, it's widely accepted that most actively managed portfolios, whether mutual funds, private accounts, or hedge funds, fail to beat the benchmarks against which they are measured. Yet most investors continue to chase the goal of market-beating returns, despite the low odds of success.

20 Nov 2015 The Joy of Exploration

Posted at 09:24h in The Friday Brief by Jared Korver, CPA, CFP®

"But language is a treacherous thing, a most unsure vehicle."

Mark Twain said that, and I can't disagree with him. Mastering the technical, dictionary definitions of words is good, but will only get you part way to communicating fully. That's because words don't always stick to their technical, dictionary definitions. They reshape themselves, sometimes drastically, based on the countless different contexts in which they find themselves written or read, spoken or heard.

13 Nov 2015 The Cost of Delay

Posted at 13:54h in The Friday Brief by Sam Bass Jr.

I took a good look at my to do list yesterday. You know the list we add things to and instantly feel we've accomplished a big part of the task merely by writing it down? My list contains things like cleaning the gutters, fixing a crack in...

06 Nov 2015 New Budget Deal Affects Social Security Strategies

Posted at 09:26h in The Friday Brief by Geoff Hall, CFP®

[caption id="attachment_7475" align="alignleft" width="300"]

^{President Obama Signs Budget On Monday}[/caption] First the good news: the House and Senate passed a new budget deal last week that suspends the debt limit until 2017 and increases funding levels for a number of federal programs. President Obama signed the deal into law on Monday, avoiding a government debt default and reducing the risk of a government shutdown in December.

30 Oct 2015 Please Federal Reserve: Raise Our Interest Rates

Posted at 12:00h in The Friday Brief by Sam Bass Jr.

[caption id="attachment_7450" align="alignleft" width="300"]

Fed Chair, Janet Yellen[/caption] The financial news is dominated by speculation of when the Fed will increase interest rates. It matters because the Fed is the only economic policy maker with any potential or apparent willingness to stimulate our economy. The Administration continues to pile on regulations and complicate the tax structure, while the Congress, through its brokenness, allows sequestration to continue cutting more deeply into the areas of government spending (defense and social) that are actually stimulative to economic growth.

23 Oct 2015 When Is A Limited Ecosystem A Good Thing?

Posted at 12:15h in The Friday Brief by Sam Bass Jr.

An article in Business Insider released earlier this week got me thinking about some glaring similarities to our own process. The piece was entitled “Apple haters are flooding Google's app store with 1-star reviews for Apple's 1st Android app.”

15 Oct 2015 The State Fair, the Best of Times, and the Worst of Times

Posted at 23:44h in The Friday Brief by Jared Korver, CPA, CFP®

[caption id="attachment_7413" align="alignleft" width="300"]

^{Curtesy of: https://www.flickr.com/photos/outofideas/}[/caption] My wife Amy and I are taking our son Miles to the fair this afternoon, and as I thought back to my own State Fair memories of riding bumper cars and watching all kinds of people, I was reminded yet again of the important role experiences play in our lives. At Beacon we have the privilege of helping folks dream about and actually make a reality some really neat experiences, which is a tremendous joy to us.