We’re sure that you’re sick and tired of hearing about the fiscal cliff at this point, and we don’t blame you. The looming tax increases and spending cuts have spawned no end of “cliffhangers” and “Cliff Notes” describing the impending doomsday if Congress and the White…
New Blended Benchmark We’ve added a new blended benchmark to our monthly portfolio performance reports that we thought you’d like to hear about. Beginning with the current batch of reports posted a few days ago, a new blended benchmark appears in several places. First, the…
We’ve all heard more than enough about the Fiscal Cliff that looms at year’s end and the ongoing negotiations between the White House and Congress aimed at avoiding it. As you might imagine, we’ve expended a great deal of time and energy analyzing the various…
We’ve all heard about the Simpson Bowles Commission (technically, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform), which was created by President Obama in early 2010 and delivered its final report on December 1 of that same year. Neither Congress nor the White House embraced…
Today is October 19, the 25th anniversary of Black Monday, the day in 1987 when the Dow fell by more than 22%, still the largest one-day percentage drop in the history of the index. The chart below, showing the level of the Dow throughout 1987, vividly illustrates…
Moving to a “Geographically-Neutral” Allocation You’ve often heard us say that it makes sense to be “geographically-neutral,” that there is no systematic return associated with geographic allocation. One exception in recent years has been an extreme under-weighting of so-called Emerging Markets, which for some time represented less than…
Two weeks ago, several members of our financial planning team attended the Financial Planning Association’s NorCal Conference in San Francisco. At the opening keynote presentation, Jennifer Micieli and Jennifer Hicks (aka “the Jens”), Elissa, and Dave listened to Dr. Laura Tyson, Berkeley professor and former…
The Eurozone is back in the news today as economic and political events have given rise to fresh doubts that European policy-makers will get their financial house in order. Renewed uncertainty took several forms, from comments by the head of the IMF that Europe is…