Suddenly, in the past few weeks, the markets have looked a lot scarier to a lot of nonprofessional investors.  Why?  The answer probably has something to do with human psychology.  An Australian company called FinaMetrica has been giving lay consumers a scientifically-designed risk profile questionnaire for the past 12 years, helping financial advisors evaluate whether [...]

There are a number of stories in the consumer press in recent weeks taking one side or another of this “debate.”  Some argue that the so-called “Armageddon” scenario is no longer a realistic probability – and therefore it is now “safe” to pile back into equities – while others say the 50%+ rally from the [...]

The strenuous debate about whether the recent rebound is the beginning of the next bull market or just another “bear market rally” has most recently been discussed in terms of “green shoots.”  The “green shoots” thinking implies that the economic data that has been “less bad” than prior months indicates a reversal to suddenly positive [...]

We tend to view the rally as temporary euphoria over the fact that the economy no longer appears to be contracting as fast as the last several months.  While it is very likely that the pace of decline will now begin to slow, we remain skeptical that the subsequent economic rebound (yes, it will come) [...]

Develop a consistent, proactive, disciplined, long term approach balanced with near term liquidity and conservativeness can help our clients towards their goals.

While much about our economic future remains uncertain, we view the historic drop in the markets in 2008 as an opportunity to achieve much better returns in the broad equity markets over the coming decade than the past decade.  As you can see below, that should be a fairly low hurdle to overcome.  It is [...]