Category Archive

The 2024 presidential election has come and gone. What was projected to be a very close race turned out to be less so. Republicans have re-taken the US Senate and appear poised to retain control of the House of Representatives as well. Whatever your political preference, it appears clear that there will be very different priorities for the US government …

In March of 2016, and as published in our book Thinking About Investing, we added to our behavioral finance principles by discussing Richard Thaler’s book, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics, and articles in The New York Times “Your Money” section from March 27, 2016. The point of the discussion was to present some of the personality traits that can …

“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 …

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 …

A picture is worth a thousand words, as the old saying goes. The “quilt” chart below, prepared by JP Morgan Asset Management, colorfully demonstrates many of the points Park Piedmont Advisors has made over the years. Several of them derive from Burton Malkiel’s 1973 classic, A Random Walk Down Wall Street: While the stock and bond markets have produced positive returns …

Money market funds have displaced stock and bond investments in many portfolios, as a recent Wall Street Journal article discusses: “With markets rocky and cash earning 5% or more, investors have boosted their holdings of money-market funds to a near-record $5.6 trillion, according to the Investment Company Institute. Both individuals and institutional investors are piling in – asset managers now have …

The Wall Street Journal posted an interesting article yesterday – “The Trusted 60-40 Investing Strategy Just Had Its Worst Year in Generations” by Eric Wallerstein – that several Park Piedmont clients have already asked us about. Especially in this period of geopolitical turmoil and what appear to be fragile markets, we thought it would be helpful to consider the article in …

We’ve discussed the August stock market update, but what about the bond market, or “fixed income,” as it’s also known in financial industry jargon? Interest rates have risen significantly over the past year and a half, as the US Federal Reserve and central banks around the world have worked to contain inflation. When interest rates rise, bond prices decline, and …

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 …

As you know, we avoid making predictions about where the stock and bond markets are headed. There are simply too many factors that impact the markets – economic, political, atmospheric too – over the short and long terms. On the other end of the prediction spectrum, a Morgan Stanley analyst recently made the sheepish admission that “we were wrong. 2023 …