18 May 2012

Posted at 10:33h in The Friday Brief by
Stock market averages continued down for their third week to levels last cleared in January. The S&P average, which peaked 13% above its January 3rd open is now up only 3.8% trimming more than a trillion in market value in May. The Vanguard Total Market is up 2.4% year to date. Yields on the 10-year US Treasury have tumbled from about 4% just two years ago when Greece's debt crisis began to 1.73% today. The 7-10-year Treasury is up 21% (not counting interest) over the same period.

09 Mar 2012

Posted at 10:52h in The Friday Brief by
The week’s economic numbers continued their trend toward improvement with manufacturing store sales, consumer confidence, and jobs growth all moving ahead. Even Greece looks to end the week on a strong note as arm-twisting forced enough bondholders to swallow losses of more than 100 billion euros ($132 billion) and allow the beleaguered country to move forward with its next phase of debt re-structuring.

02 Mar 2012

Posted at 10:41h in The Friday Brief by
It is now two and a half years since the Great Recession officially ended. The 18-month downturn was the longest and most severe since World War II according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private, nonprofit research group which officially calls the beginning and ends of recessions. But things are getting better you say. Why bring up the ugly past? Some economic data have indeed shown improvements, particularly of late. Manufacturing has been a steady stalwart of the recovery. Exports have been generally strong for months, while the much touted automobile industry has made a ‘remarkable’ turnaround domestically. GM regained the lead over Toyota for goodness sake.

24 Feb 2012

Posted at 10:21h in Briefs about our Process, The Friday Brief by
Last week in Measuring Uncertainty I focused on the pitfalls of using performance alone to measure progress toward reaching your financial goals. It’s only natural to use returns because they are the universal language of the financial services industry. And if the language of the industry is returns, then the methodology for producing them is active management; where managers make specific investments with a primary goal of outperforming an investment benchmark index. But with return alone as your guide, you are left to wonder just how effectively your managers are improving your situation relative to your goals, how are they managing your wealth?