Blog

16 May 2013

Posted at 13:24h in Blogs by
When I was growing up my family didn’t have a lot of money to spend on luxuries.  In fact, I can remember rooting around in our couch cushions trying to find spare change to buy gas for my '69 VW Bug.  With a 10 gallon tank and 90¢ gas you’d be surprised how far I could go after a little scavenging.  Thankfully, today I can fill my Honda Accord’s gas tank without having to tear through our living room couch cushions, but, I still have a tendency to view money as a very limited resource.  Some would say I'm frugal, others stingy. Either way my past experiences directly impact the conversations I have and the decisions I make with my finances.

10 May 2013

Posted at 19:01h in Blogs by
Thank you for checking in. We've included a few of the articles we've come across this week we thought you might enjoy. Please let us know if there are areas you would like added to our mix.

10 May 2013

Posted at 11:10h in The Friday Brief by
Next week's economic reports may test investors' resolve as closely-watched reports on retail sales, housing, jobs, manufacturing, and inflation are released. The most important is retail sales, which drives 70% of our economy. It is likely to show a second month of contraction, according to economists tracked by Bloomberg.

09 May 2013

Posted at 14:12h in Blogs by
If you could use only one word to describe the most important thing in investing what would it be? If the question was real estate, you'd quickly say - LOCATION. If eating - healthy, maybe taste, or sport - winning, or sailing - wind, or mechanical motion - friction.

03 May 2013

Posted at 12:16h in The Friday Brief by
There was building sentiment in April that we were headed for another spring slowdown. Unfortunately, last Friday's GDP report failed to put those concerns to rest as it showed the economy was growing, but more slowly than anticipated, and not fast enough to create meaningful job growth.  This week the Fed announced no changes in rate targets or current stimulus plans saying the economy was growing "at a moderate pace." But remarkably several usually hawkish (meaning tough on inflation) Fed bank presidents revealed their growing concern over "De"- flation. And just to keep things interesting, today's jobs report stirred the pot further with a surprise on the upside. Today, we'll try to make some sense of it all.

26 Apr 2013

Posted at 11:40h in The Friday Brief by
The objective of the sequester was to build an arbitrary cliff so fearsome that the Congress would never steer us over it. Well as we know, they did, with us in the back seat. What is fascinating though, at least during our descent from the cliff, is the unintended consequences of sequester; as invariably happens when government tries to be clever.

19 Apr 2013

Posted at 00:00h in The Friday Brief by
We are beneficiaries of the wealthiest nation in the world. But no matter how intentional we try to be, we still take for granted the countless common conveniences that were unimaginable or wildly extravagant not so many years ago. And despite our boundless resources, education systems, capital, enabling technologies, and the conveniences that make them all work for us, seems we are able to find precious little time to pursue our highest and our best purposes.

12 Apr 2013

Posted at 13:11h in The Friday Brief by
The stock market has been on a tear this week, making new highs while defying negative trending economic news and continued impasse in Washington on vital fiscal policies. The S&P 500 rose 0.4% yesterday to close at a record 1,593.37. It reversed this morning on news that retail sales for March came in well below expectations and that the weakness was broad based.

05 Apr 2013

Posted at 13:22h in The Friday Brief by
Stocks for the week are down between 1.8% and 2.2% according to the S&P 500 and the Broad US Market respectively. Most of the decline comes today on the disappointing news that US employers added only 88,000 jobs in March, the slowest pace in nine months. Economists were expecting an increase of 200,000 workers.

29 Mar 2013

Posted at 16:37h in The Friday Brief by
Why do we Christians call today Good Friday? On this day the “Light of the World” was extinguished. Jesus Christ hung on a cross for six torturous hours and died at the ninth hour or about 3:00. His followers hid themselves in fear of instant death at the hands of crowds that had been whipped up against them by the rulers of the day.