Newsletter Archive - 2024

December 31, 2024

2024 was another good year for the markets with its second consecutive year of 20%+ returns, but it was a bit of an odd year. Election years tend to have a lot of volatility going into the election until the market gets more certainty, but not this year as it mostly marched higher with short, small drawdowns. The maximum intra-year drawdown was only 8.5% ...

September 27, 2024

One of the previous chairs of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, once said, “If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.” The current Federal Reserve chair tries to take the opposite approach and broadcast his plans as clearly as one can when trying to predict future economic conditions. ...

August 6, 2024

There’s a saying that stocks go up like an escalator and down like an elevator. Over the last few days, we’ve been taking that elevator ride. After a year of doing well and reaching new all-time highs just a few weeks ago, the market is almost in correction territory with the tech heavy Nasdaq Composite Index already there. So ...

June 27, 2024

As I write this, the two major party presidential nominees are preparing for tonight’s first of two debates during this election cycle. I am holding out hope that there will be high decorum with both on their best behavior. OK, I can’t ...

March 27, 2024

I was fortunate to be able to go down to Florida in January to celebrate my Grandmother’s 95^th birthday. My cousin bought one of those signs that talks about nostalgic things from your birth year as a decoration. In 1929, the first car radio was made by Motorola, the first public phone booths (what are those?) were installed ...

January 3, 2024

Wow, what a good last quarter! We had nine straight weeks of gains for the market – the longest stretch of positive returns since 2004. Once the market got some clarity from the Federal Reserve that inflation seems to be moderating and more rate hikes are likely not necessary, it was off to the races. ...