The holiday season is here! Or rather, major retailers would have you believe it has already been here. This year, giants like Amazon, Target, and Walmart “moved Black Friday up to early October,” giving shoppers access to “highly anticipated … deals six weeks ahead of Thanksgiving.” This may be good news for some: the “most wonderful time of the year” has been …
What is Sustainable Investing?
This week’s Life with Money features PPA advisor Samantha Ngooi exploring sustainable investing. This is a substantial, important, and somewhat complex topic – so our discussion will extend across a few installments of Life with Money. In today’s part one, we provide broad definitions of various relevant terms and discuss why someone might want to invest this way. In upcoming parts, …
Core Values Embodied in Work: A Reflection on Victor Levinson
This past Sunday, family and friends of Victor Levinson gathered in New York City to remember Vic and reflect on his life, work, and relationships. Reflections were shared by several of Vic’s lifelong friends; three of his grandchildren; and his three adult children (Nick, Lynn, and Tom). Each of the reflections offered a special window onto Vic. Nick’s reflections, in …
Investing vs Trading
In the everyday reporting about the ups and downs of markets, there is a frequent ambiguity that’s highly important, though easy to overlook. Take this lead story from the front page of this past weekend’s Wall Street Journal. “U.S. stocks slid Friday after a relatively strong jobs report, capping a roller-coaster week in which investors built up hopes for easier …
Consistent Advice Through Difficult Times
After a miserable month of September when stock prices declined 8% and bond prices dropped 4%, we want to provide some context for what’s happened so far in 2022. Accounting for the most recent few days of significant gains in October, the S&P 500 is down a little more than 20% for the year. Bonds have fallen about 15%. The …
Reflecting on Time as an Asset
When you think of your most valuable assets, how much thought goes into your time? For many of us – myself included – there is an automatic quality to time, an assumption that the rhythms of our life will, going forward, look and feel much the way they have. September contributes to this. We live close to a college campus, and while …
New Words for Familiar Feelings: Definitions for Life, Work & Money
We’ve been sending you our new Life with Money column for several weeks now. Although I (Nick) have written a few of the market updates, this is my first time contributing a more personal essay. Some of what we’ve written has touched on religious and spiritual traditions and their approach to money. While I don’t have any organized religious practice, a …
What a Difference a Day Makes! (Or Does It?)
We were planning to write this commentary on Monday, September 12th. If we had, the story might have mentioned the past four days of positive results for the markets, with the S&P 500 index rising more than 5%. This “mini-recovery” came right after a significant decline that interrupted an earlier potential recovery from late June through mid-August. But we didn’t …
Mozzarella … with a Pinch of Inflation: Gender Roles & Inflation Expectations
“Fewer fruits and vegetables, more carbs and cheese.” That was the recommendation our pediatrician gave us a few weeks ago for our one-year-old daughter. It was enviable. Sign me up for that diet. The next day I dutifully added “block of fresh mozzarella” to our grocery list. When my husband returned from the grocery store, he dropped the heavy cheese …
Stress and Investing Amid Volatility
Buried near the end of the August 29 Bloomberg Businessweek story, “Hope You Enjoyed the Summer Rally,” was a remarkable piece of data. “The American Association of Individual Investors’ latest survey showed that bears [PPA note: those pessimistic about market prospects] went from outnumbering bulls [those optimistic about market prospects] by 41 percentage points in June to less than 4 percentage …