Blog

22 Aug 2014

Posted at 10:29h in The Friday Brief by

If you visited the Yahoo Finance web page on Wednesday, you may have seen this headline: "Dow 6,000: Wild prediction or worthwhile caution?" The article behind the headline is about a guy named Harry Dent. Dent has made a number of market predictions over the past few decades--his...

15 Aug 2014

Posted at 14:30h in The Friday Brief by
It's that time of year again--kids are going back to school, last trips to the beach are being taken, and mornings here and there are beginning to feel a tinge of crisp coolness (at least in Raleigh). Fall is coming. And with it comes an increase in planning. With the kids going back to school, conversations may begin (or restart) about taking them out of the public school system, or putting them back in. Perhaps college is around the corner and there are worries about paying for it. We start thinking about holidays and whether or not we'll travel, and if so, for how long and with whom? We brace for the increased busyness at work, some of us with an excitement and eagerness, and others of us with dread. The former start to question if they'll ever want to retire, and the latter wonder how soon they can.

01 Aug 2014

Posted at 12:44h in The Friday Brief by
For the past several months the subject of an impending market correction has moved to the fore of media attention and investor concern. With yesterday's stock market pull-back, more have joined the discussion.

25 Jul 2014

Posted at 11:05h in The Friday Brief by
Few terms evoke greater discomfort than the word budget. Our defenses go up immediately at its mere suggestion. We confess we should budget, or we admit our fear of what budgets reveal of our spending choices and amounts, or we just don't want to face the guilt they invariably cause. Sound familiar?

11 Jul 2014

Posted at 11:50h in General by
Just this week I received three invitations to steak dinners at Ruth's Chris and Sullivan's in Raleigh, promising all the information I would need for a happy retirement. Not surprisingly, they all came from local companies we know as annuity sellers. One of the invitations came from an agent who has a local radio show who unashamedly calls himself a fiduciary. Why the regulators allow this guy to imply he has no fiduciary conflicts of interest when he sells annuity products with compensation ranges anywhere from 1% to 7% as well as incentive trips and other perks is beyond me.

27 Jun 2014

Posted at 16:40h in General by
In a busy week for economic reports, the standout was that the US economy contracted in the first quarter by a 2.9% annualized rate, the most since the depths of the last recession. According to Bloomberg, it marked the biggest downward revision from the agency’s second GDP estimate since records began in 1976. The revision reflected slowdowns in consumer and health care spending. Many economists are saying the drop was not reflective of the broader fundamentals, blaming much of the decline on weather. Maybe, but consumers don't appear to be buying it. Real consumer spending was down 0.2% in April and 0.1% in May, and the weather was good. Durable goods (designed to last long periods) orders were much weaker than expected for May as they fell 1.0% in May after rising 0.8% in April. Transportation was the largest contributor to the decline falling 3.0% after a 1.7% rise in April.

20 Jun 2014

Posted at 14:08h in General by
The analogy of life as a highway poses some interesting questions. Some are obvious, others less so, but all are interesting. As kids we continually asked our Dads, 'are we there yet?' But with little sense of time or surroundings, Dad's answer always fell short of providing us with any helpful information.

13 Jun 2014

Posted at 16:11h in The Friday Brief by
Risk in investing is generally understood to mean the possibility of losing money. But there is a more important distinction to consider. For instance, when you work with a broker or a money manager you complete a risk tolerance questionnaire. It basically asks you what is the maximum point of risk (loss of your money) you can stand before you spend sleepless nights and stomach-sick days?