Views from the Hill

January, 2022 KEY TAKEAWAYS Stock markets hit new records during 2021, with the S&P 500 progressively hitting new highs as Americans painfully adjusted to a post-lockdown world Inflation hit new highs as prices suddenly increased with no end in sight, … Continue reading →

Fueled by endless low interest rates and unending government spending, U.S. inflation accelerated to over 6% annualized as Dow Jones Averages of leading U.S. stocks moved to a record 36,000. In 1999 during a previous booming stock market, two economists, … Continue reading →

Fed watching is a pastime of many investors. Fed officials recently signaling that they favor tapering of bond purchases in 2021, in line with announcements from the European Central Bank, has captured considerable attention from those watchers. With ample speculation … Continue reading →

Treat record high stock prices with neither excitement nor alarm. KEY TAKEAWAYS Financial journalists stoke investor “record-high” anxiety by implying in articles that physical laws apply to financial markets—what goes up must come down. But shares are not heavy objects … Continue reading →

Investment opportunities exist around the globe, but the randomness of stock returns in different countries makes it almost impossible to predict which country’s stock market will outperform others. How should you manage that kind of uncertainty? Approximately half of stocks … Continue reading →

KEY TAKEAWAYS After last year’s many surprising shocks, sharp rebounds in prices this year should be no surprise. Potential inflation is one among many factors to account for when setting a price at which to trade. Looking at headlines from … Continue reading →

KEY TAKEAWAYS Recent academic-level research indicates that a globally diversified and structured investment strategy based on an array of assets classes would outpace long-term inflationary effects. The protection offered by inflation-indexed securities appears to be the most effective for fixed-income … Continue reading →

Whether it’s the tulip mania of the 1620s, the railway boom of the 1840s, the dot-com craze of the 1990s, or today’s cryptomania and astronomical prices for SPACs, financial bubbles have been around as long as markets existed. Before a … Continue reading →

Bitcoin and lesser-known cryptocurrencies are receiving intense media coverage these days. Many wonder whether this electronic “money” represents a “paradigm shift” and should deserve a place in their planning strategy. While their prices have soared, that is the past. What … Continue reading →

A year ago, at the end of March 2020, the S&P 500 was down nearly 20%1 and the world was going into lockdown. Many experts and economists wrote about where we would be in a year. I don’t remember anyone … Continue reading →