Risk Management

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…

We all know that US stocks have significantly outperformed international stocks in recent years. Because of this and the fact that many US based multinationals are major players in the world economy, many clients have asked whether international diversification is unnecessary. Not at all. A few reasons to continue investing internationally: International stocks represent about…

A basic step in almost any financial plan is to save cash and hold it in a savings account for an emergency. I think we would all agree this is a good idea. This is a form of insurance. We pay money for life, health and disability insurance. These COST us money. Holding cash in…

Losing money is never someone’s idea of a long-term investment plan, but a well-diversified portfolio will usually contain some investments that have indeed lost value, at least over the short term. But sometimes an investment that has lost value can still do some good. Given the recent ups and downs in the market, now could…

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

20 Second Advisor: Why you should diversify globally

20 Second Advisor: Cash = Insurance

20 Second Advisor: Now can be a great time to tax loss harvest