Asset Location: Organize Your Portfolio Like Your Kitchen

My family’s kitchen will not be profiled on HGTV as a model of organization.  We face the practical limitations of 25-year old builder-grade cabinets and constrained space.  We also face the reality confronted by many parents of young children.  That is, the focus of children emptying a clean dishwasher is on getting it done quickly [...]

4 Things You’ll Wish You Did Before the Bull Market Becomes a Bear Market

Well-known investor Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital has often said, “You can’t predict, but you can prepare.”  While markets are cyclical, oscillating between bull and bear markets, you can never know with certainty when the market is going to turn, how quickly it may do so, how far it might fall, or when it will [...]

Low Rates and High Valuations Have You Down? Don’t Worry…Plan Right!

Since the advent of the Great Financial Crisis in 2008, catalyzed by successive rounds of quantitative easing and ever more stimulative monetary policy from the Federal Reserve, we have found ourselves in an environment of extremely low interest rates.  In this environment, fixed-income investors and savers seeking stable income streams have been punished, receiving ever [...]

IRA Rollover or Leave Assets in a 401k?

In a country founded on the idea of individual freedom, Americans value the idea of choice.  We inherently believe that maximizing individual freedom increases our individual welfare or happiness and that the best way to maximize individual freedom is to maximize choice.  A bar with 120 beers on tap is perceived better than a bar [...]

Recessions. Markets. Risk.

Investment offices teem with daily data releases and economic news bites. Afternoon market round-ups attribute the day’s movements to whatever data points best fit the narrative of the day or week. Investors crave the narrative, eagerly awaiting the next market moving release. Lately financial news has inundated us with talk of global slowdowns, trade wars, [...]

Can Student Loans Fairly Be Labeled “Good Debt”?

Last week’s Astute Angle post explained some fallacies related to mortgage borrowing and how the free pass treatment of home mortgages as "good debt" leads to poor financial decision-making.  In response to that post, I received a few questions related to the "good debt" label of student loans that prompted another debt-centric post.  Three of [...]

The Mortgage Myths We Want to Believe

Baseball, apple pie, mom, Chevrolet, hot dogs, and home ownership.  Americana.  To question any of these things is un-American.  And so it becomes a largely unquestioned truth that borrowing money to buy a home is "good debt."  Home ownership, after all, is just living the American dream. But as a result of accepting this good debt [...]

Snowfall in Finland Is Above Average This Winter So Why Do The Knicks Keep Losing

You may have heard the news.  Between October 1st and December 31st, the stock market delivered its worst quarter since 2008 to culminate its worst year since 2008.  It was the stock market's worst December since 1931.  What caused the stock market selloff?   As we say often, there is rarely ever a definitive answer [...]

The Rewards of Fear

26 days into my professional career, something that had never happened before, happened.  And it was not an unprecedented event that largely went unnoticed – like the time, early in my career, when I inadvertently wore different dress shoes on my left and right feet.  While that remains memorable to at least one person, the [...]

Underwhelmed, Most of the Time

Investing in the stock market probably does not feel boring in December 2018.  Scary, volatile, unsettling, and capricious are terms that might be used to describe investing over the past few weeks.  But not boring. Yet successful investing is boring.  Beautifully boring.  Famous hedge fund investor George Soros summed it up well: "If investing is [...]

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