This past February, prompted by President Obama, the Department of Labor (DOL) established new rules for retirement advisors requiring they work under the fiduciary standard. In short, this closes the door on an industry-wide practice of abuse that needs to end. Currently, there are two separate standards than an advisor or broker is required to […]
To our readers, Until now I have had the pleasure of writing the majority of our blog entries, but am very happy to now present the writings of Juliana Cusack. Juliana is our analyst on the venture fund and works closely with investment team on economic matters. While I will continue to write the quarterly Market […]
Since our last update, a few events have occurred that are worth discussing. Starting with the more benign, the jobs numbers for April were disappointing. There were 160,000 new jobs created, which is healthy but a deviation from the 200,000 new jobs that have been created each month on average over the past two years. […]
“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” — Albert Einstein It is difficult to ignore the language of hate, violence, and prejudice that has become the focal point of our political discourse, taking the […]
I usually like to use the Market Update to offer you reflections on events of the past quarter and observations of underlying trends looking forward. Unfortunately, the disappointment of 2015 and the disastrous start to 2016 defy most sound analyses. Namely, the first two weeks of 2016 gave us the worst opening to a year […]
We are postponing the publication of our Market Update by a day to address the recent market volatility this week. The market opened this morning with a bad hangover, dropping three hundred points on the Dow before the official open. By midday that market was down over 3%, on top of a miserable start to […]
We are just eight trading days into 2016, and it is already one of the worst yearly performances in quite a while – down -7.5%. The next two days will be critical, however, in determining if this is a trend or another speed bump in an already rocky market. Using the S&P 500 as a gauge, […]