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 [...]

By: Matt Garrott The S&P 500 is up over 3% since the election. I hesitate to call this a “Trump Rally”, especially as the election looms so large in recent memory.  For now, it seems prudent to recognize that the election has brought with it a reduction in uncertainty and a sigh of [...]

By: Mark Weiskind No matter your political leaning, you likely didn’t expect Donald Trump to win the election last week.  Most of the “experts” (the pollsters, the pundits, the media) sure didn’t see it coming, Hillary Clinton seemed a lock.  Nor did you likely expect the stock market would rally in the days [...]

By: Matt Garrott As a whisky (whiskey here in the States) matures, it loses about 2% of its volume to evaporation each year.  Distilleries call this The Angels’ Share.  They fill oak casks with a precious liquid knowing that each year part of their hard work will simply disappear.  I can’t help but think of [...]

By: Matt Garrott The 2016 Harvard Management Company Annual Endowment Report is out.  What was once a great write-up about the cutting edge of investment management now serves as a warning that every investor can learn from.  The endowment’s fixation on keeping up with the Joneses (Yale and Stanford, especially) has led to [...]

By: Matt Garrott What do you remember most about the markets over the last 12 months or so? Was it the big drawdown in the first quarter?  Brexit?  Maybe the flash crash from a year ago?  How did you feel during each of these supposedly world-ending crises and how do you feel now [...]