Amy Gallo, a client of Park Piedmont, has dedicated her career to helping people improve their lives at work, asking and answering questions such as: How can we make our work environments and relationships more positive and less stressful? Amy is a workplace expert who writes and speaks about gender, interpersonal dynamics, difficult conversations, feedback, and effective communication. She is the best-selling …
Lessons on Investing from Daniel Kahneman
“Daniel Kahneman may well have had more influence on investing than anyone else who wasn’t a professional investor.” That’s a considerable statement, especially coming from Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Zweig, also known as The Intelligent Investor. But considering Kahneman’s life’s work, it’s convincing. Kahneman – a psychologist at Princeton and the 2002 winner of the Nobel Prize in economics …
Peter Brill and Wendy Lewis: World Travelers & Thoughtful People
Park Piedmont clients are entrepreneurs and homemakers, world-renowned physicians and award-winning authors and directors, the founders of startups and the owners of closely-held businesses, and young professionals and retirees. The common thread is that they are thoughtful, intelligent people doing good and interesting things with their lives. Today we’re kicking off a new series to help our clients get to know other …
TCJA Tax Update
If the words “tax code” immediately make your eyes glaze over … well, you wouldn’t be alone. Jeff Sommer of The New York Times recently wrote that, unfortunately, “navigating the byzantine U.S. tax rules … may be enough of a headache. But you can count on fresh tax stress coming from Washington not far down the road.” That’s because significant parts of the Federal …
Black Swans & The Certainty of Uncertainty
Rarely but inevitably, a single event will flip the world upside down – the kind of improbable, unexpected thing that occurs on a day just like any other, but then alters life as we know it. Sometimes that thing is devastating, such as a freak accident or the sudden death of a loved one. Sometimes it’s delightful – a newfound …
2023 Year-End Market Update
We had no idea what the 2023 year-end market update would look like a year ago. As it turns out, the year ended with US stocks up 26 percent, as measured by the US Total Stock Market index fund. The total bond market was up 6.8 percent. Inflation cooled in late 2023 to a 3.4 percent annual inflation rate – …
An Unflashy Yet Proven Investment Approach
November was a great month for stocks. The S&P 500 – a stock market index that tracks the performance of 500 of the biggest companies in the US – performed better in November than it has all year. By December 1, it had risen over 10 percent from its late-October low, gaining all the ground it had lost earlier this year. …
A Humble and Balanced Investment Approach
When the world – or the market – feels unstable, unpredictable, and perhaps even unnerving, people often draw comfort from simple narratives. Our lack of control drives us to search for some sort of explanation that we can understand – a storyline we can wrap our minds around that provides answers and creates meaning. Maybe this desire for a tidy …
August Stock Market Update: More to the Story
Maybe you thought the August stock market update would be dismal. To be fair, there’s some truth to that. US stocks, developed international stocks (from countries in Europe and Japan), emerging international stocks (from countries including China, India, and Brazil) … markets from literally all over the world were down during the month of August. And yet if we widen the time …
A Season of Transitions
For many of us, Labor Day Weekend indicates a transition. The unofficial end of summer; the herald of fall activities; a new school year for kids, grandkids, or even ourselves; the subtle shift in nighttime temperatures; the sudden ubiquitous pumpkin spice everything. Within the last few weeks at Park Piedmont, one of us announced a pregnancy. One of us dropped off a …