By: Matt Garrott What Keeps Us Up At Night? The ghosts and goblins of Halloween are in the rear-view mirror so what keeps us up at night now? Are macroeconomic conditions a concern? What about political discord at home and abroad? Maybe the dreaded Black Swan event is our bogeyman? Our true fears [...]
By: Matt Garrott Wealth management is often associated with the word “No”. Got any hot stock tips? No. Should we be investing like that guy on TV? No and a speedboat is not an investment. Being negative all the time is no fun for us either, so here are some things to be [...]
By: Matt Garrott James Bond movies and the TV series Seinfeld are both classics and cultural touchstones, but the conflicts in these stories could have been resolved more quickly than they played out. Goldfinger could have just shot Bond instead of strapping him to a table under a slow-moving laser. Seinfeld episodes like [...]
By: Matt Garrott The month of May marks the 7th anniversary of the first Bitcoin transaction, an exchange of 10,000 Bitcoins for 2 Papa Johns pizzas. Reaction to the trade at the time was mixed. There were many people who thought it was neat that someone finally bartered the digital currency for an actual item. [...]
By: Matt Garrott Capital Group is pushing back hard against the passive investing crowd. They make the case that some basic screens (low expenses, manager investing in their own fund, etc) can reveal good managers. I agree with that. The screens I use at Fairway are kind of hilariously basic relative to the universe of [...]
By: Matt Garrott No One Expects a 40% Return for the S&P 500 This Year I defy you to find a pundit optimistic about the stock market. Is anyone predicting double digit returns? Low to mid-single digits seems to be the popular view among those shouting the loudest. Short term returns have been stellar as [...]
By: Matt Garrott As usual, Warren Buffett’s letter to shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway is a must-read. It is well known that he advocates low-fee indexing for most investors. As his famous bet with a hedge fund of funds manager winds down, Buffett unleashed both barrels on high-fee money managers: “The underlying hedge-fund managers in our [...]
By: Matt Garrott Punxsutawney Phil practices accurate ambiguity. The vast majority of the time, he sees his shadow. This portends 6 more weeks of winter, generally lining up with the Spring Equinox. What a great strategy. Winter usually lasts 6 more weeks so predict 6 more weeks of winter and most of the time you’ll [...]
By: Matt Garrott We’ve witnessed the peaceful exchange of power in the most powerful country on the planet. Now, how do we create a “Trump Portfolio” of only the best, really the greatest, everybody says so securities? Does it make sense to overweight small cap manufacturing stocks that might benefit from a strong dollar or perhaps bank [...]
By: Matt Garrott What Happened in 2016 The stock market started the year on the wrong foot with a 10% drawdown. It was the worst start to a calendar year ever and prompted knee-jerk reactions such as the RBS note for their clients to “sell everything”. At the end of June, the UK [...]