The history of estate taxes in the United States is convoluted, and that is an understatement.  There is little point in reviewing all the various changes federal estate taxes have gone through over the decades aside from pointing out the … Continue reading →

Simply put – yes. Most pensions are still calculating their benefits assuming a 7%+ long-term rate of growth. Looking back at the last 30 years of market returns, that doesn’t seem so far-fetched, but unfortunately a pension fund’s ability to … Continue reading →

A 529 ABLE account (or 529 A Savings Plan) was created by the Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) Act of 2014 to provide Americans with disabilities the opportunity to save up to $15,000 (2019 limit) per year in a … Continue reading →

One of the most dangerous delusions being pumped and disseminated by Wall Street today is that the economy and stock market can and should continue to thrive indefinitely without interruption. Wall Street is notoriously perma-bullish based on its business model … Continue reading →

As we’ve discussed with clients for a couple years now, the outlook for precious metals has been steadily improving. From a price or relative value standpoint, they’ve seldom been cheaper relative to financial assets and as we’ve stressed, long-term investment … Continue reading →

You may have to account for at least one, but probably more of the preceding issues before and during your own retirement.  However, the biggest threat that we can think of is also the one that gets almost no attention … Continue reading →

The month of July has seen the broad U.S. stock indexes such as the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, and Nasdaq achieve new highs – which of course is a good thing for those with meaningful exposure to them. … Continue reading →

For many years now, home-owning Americans had more equity in their homes than they did in their retirement accounts.  In order to afford their retirements, they would have to find a way to unlock that equity, either by selling their … Continue reading →

There is an abundance of online advice on this topic.  For every year beyond your full retirement age you delay taking social security benefits, those benefits go up 8%.  As a result, many Internet experts say that’s the way to … Continue reading →

Most American workers received pensions in past decades.  When pensions started becoming more scarce, it forced Americans who had no real knowledge of saving and investing to manage their own money they would need to secure their retirements.  By most … Continue reading →

There’s no question that geopolitical headlines can affect markets on any given day. An escalation of tariff disputes with China, a change in tone coming from the European Central Bank (ECB), tension with our allies in the Middle East – … Continue reading →

Put simply – no, and here’s why. Think about it this way: Stocks at any point in time can be ranked on a scale of one to ten based on how expensive they are. The vast majority of the time, … Continue reading →

For an activity that is supposedly best done using pure logic, investing can be incredibly emotional. There will inevitably be times that test one’s intestinal fortitude and to expect otherwise is envisioning a path that has never existed in financial … Continue reading →

John Pierpont Morgan was known to have said, “Nothing so undermines your financial judgement as the sight of your neighbor getting rich.” Understanding the bigger picture can help us avoid unrealistic performance extrapolation (both up and down) and stay focused … Continue reading →

There’s an old business axiom “You Are What You Measure” and when it comes to investing, there is no shortage of things to measure: returns, risk, alpha, beta, tracking error, and so on. Each has its purpose. Measuring investment performance … Continue reading →

The last few weeks have been very unkind to gold investors with the rather choppy upward trend since the beginning of 2016 being called into question with a seemingly day after day drop in price. From a technical standpoint, gold … Continue reading →

The most recent monthly jobs report came out last Friday and was solid on most counts. The pundits were very excited about it and used it as an example of how strong the economy is and where it’s likely headed. … Continue reading →

On March 22nd we sent a special edition of our monthly Cadence Clips entitled “Was January 26 the Bull Market Peak?” After that S&P 500 peak of 2,873, the index’s value closed at ~2,581 twice: on February 8th and April … Continue reading →

Any investor who has not been 100% invested in the stock market since March 9, 2009 has missed out on some amount of stock market returns. However, everyone knows very few people should ever be 100% invested in the stock … Continue reading →

As a reminder, there are no completely safe places to invest, as nearly all investments have the potential to lose value at times, but there are almost always some investments that are relatively safer than others. The first step in … Continue reading →