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. …
The Benefits of Tax-Loss Harvesting
One of Park Piedmont’s primary goals as a firm is to focus on thoughtful long-term planning for our clients’ financial lives. One important but often overlooked example of this planning involves tax-loss harvesting (TLH). As described in more detail below, tax-loss harvesting opportunities aren’t necessarily available every year. But when they are, as in 2022 and possibly this year as …
Gratitude and Its Benefits
We’ve reached another Thanksgiving. A national moment for giving thanks and feeling grateful. In this installment of Life with Money, we’d like to home in on gratitude. Before we discuss it, we would like first to express it. First, we want to say: we’re grateful for you, our clients. We’re grateful for the depth and length of our relationships with you. Likewise, …
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 …
Money Market Funds as Part of a Balanced Portfolio
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 Trouble with One-Size-Fits-All Investing Approaches
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 …
Understanding Long-Term Care
For many, considering the need for life insurance happens around the time they have their first child. This makes sense, as having children is often the first time that people have another person depend on them financially. A lot of new parents purchase term life insurance, which is designed to last for a specific period (20 years, 30 years, etc.), because …
Bonds and Fixed Income Alternatives
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 …
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 …
The Value of Play
For the past 15 years or so, I’ve had a very important hold on my calendar on Wednesdays at 5 pm. If I’m in Chicago, I make it there, with surprisingly few exceptions. My appointment is at the basketball court in our local neighborhood Jewish Community Center. There, 8-10 middle-aged men gather to stretch, play, sweat, hydrate, rinse and repeat until our …