Risk Management

If you have any fine art or collectibles (furniture, jewelry, etc), it’s a good idea to get them appraised. This way, you can insure them at the correct value. These items often have a special place in our hearts. You may have saved your hard earned money to purchase them. Or, you may have inherited…

A pressure relief valve on a water heater allows excess pressure to escape so the tank doesn’t explode!! This made me think of assessing financial risk. I was recently working with a client to analyze a large financial investment. There are many unknowns and some risk involved, so we walked through each scenario and identified…

Many of you have seen the headlines this week about Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse and that some other banks (namely First Republic and Credit Suisse) are in trouble. I thought it would be helpful to give you a brief overview of why SVB failed and if it has an impact on your portfolio. Without further…

I often tell people that timing the market is akin to trying to catch a falling knife. You might get lucky and grab the falling knife on the handle. Or you might get unlucky – grab the knife on the blade and end up in the hospital. In a nutshell, we know that the market…

I was in a meeting last week with a group of other local financial advisors. One of the advisors shared a story about a prospect (from long ago) that was a Yahoo executive. At the time, Yahoo stock was soaring. The advisor begged the prospect to diversify and engage in a strategy that would reduce…

Benjamin Graham – one of the fathers of value investing is credited with the following quote: In the short-run, the market is a voting machine – reflecting a voter-registration test that requires only money, not intelligence or emotional stability – but in the long-run, the market is a weighing machine. Benjamin Graham, as Quoted in…

I’m a firm believer that investments should have expected future cash flow. True investors should “expect” to be compensated for delaying gratification and taking risk (ie uncertainty). If an “investment” doesn’t have future expected cash flow, it is not an investment. Rather, it is a speculative guess. These speculative guesses are based purely on the…

This past quarter has been a tough time to be in an investor. In the first quarter of 2022, all major asset classes had negative returns. See here for a recap of Q1 2022 returns. However, during the last 13 years (2009-2021), US stock returns have been pretty good – the S&P 500 had positive…

It’s in the news: “Inflation is on the rise!” So what? We haven’t had high inflation in a long time. If we experience short-term inflation related to COVID supply chain issues, that’s not too bad. If we experience long-term inflation and price increases are “here to stay” for a while, then investors should make sure…

Let’s be honest – most of us don’t really understand inflation. The dictionary defines inflation as: 1“a continuing rise in the general price level usually attributed to an increase in the volume of money and credit relative to available goods and services.” In a nutshell, inflation is when prices go up. But why is that…

20 Second Advisor: Get your fine art / collectibles appraised!

20 Second Advisor: Identify The Pressure Relief Valves

20 Second Advisor: Bank Troubles & Your Portfolio

20 Second Advisor: Catching a falling knife (or why you don’t want to sell out in this market).

20 Second Advisor: Concentrated Wealth – A good thing until it’s not.

20 Second Advisor: The Weight of Decades vs The Opinion of Weeks

20 Second Advisor: Investor vs Speculator?

20 Second Advisor: Are negative years normal?

20 Second Advisor: How to hedge inflation?

20 Second Advisor: The Costs of Inflation