Earnings Season Preview
While 2013 is over, a lot of data for the past year is still flowing in. Last Friday, investors were fairly surprised by a jobs report that showed the unemployment rate drop handily from 7% to 6.7%. Yet monthly job gains were only 74,000, the weakest of 2013. On the surface, this makes little sense. […]
Bitcoin – An Investment Or A Speculation?
What is money? It’s a simple question really, but when we really dig deeper, things become a little cloudier. Put simply, money is a medium of exchange for goods or services. We give a mechanic some green pieces of paper-or the electronic form through our card-and he or she fixes our car. We all want […]
Thanks-‘Living’
Today’s missive is not about the returns, risks or rewards of investing. It is purely aimed at taking stock of our personal positives and giving thanks for all that we have. It may sound callous and materialistic, but we are thankful for the recovery. It’s easy to take for granted where we are today in […]
Is This A Bubble? Can I Keep Emotion Out of My Plan?
It goes without saying that domestic stock markets have been strong this year. While the S&P 500 is up over 26% year to date in price as of Friday’s close (11/15/13), it has yet to suffer a correction of even 10%. The largest drawdown so far this year was only about 7.5%. This is a […]
Political Investing
The rhetoric remains fierce, as the debt ceiling debate drama continues…again. Even though we go through this cycle over and over, we keep getting questions from investors as to whether or not they should get more conservative “until this all blows over.” Our advice, time and again, remains “Stick to your plan.” A wonderful article-On […]
Scary Headlines, Remarkable Returns
The threat of a government shutdown led investment markets to close out the third quarter with a whimper rather than a bang. All the uncertainty has tended to obscure the fact that most U.S. stock market investors have experienced significant gains so far this year. And the recent quarter was no exception. Despite the rocky […]
Reflections from Race for the Cure 2013
During the early and rainy hours of this past Sunday morning, September 15, the SFA team completed our second annual Race for the Cure run benefiting breast cancer research. We joined the thousands of men, women and children who walked or ran to forward research toward a cure, and colored the race path pink with […]
The Great Tradeoff
In 1913, the Federal Reserve was created by Congress. The objective was to create an organization that held centralized powers over the banking system. One of the goals, in creating the Fed, was to avoid the boom/bust cycles that had been so prevalent in the American economy in the 1800s and the beginning of the […]
Good Time to Invest?
“Today, my long-term view of U.S. equities remains bullish, and U.S. equities could easily be 30-40 percent higher than today’s levels within two to three years. Having said that, for a number of reasons, now does not appear to be a favorable entry point.“ ~Scott Minerd, Global CIO, Guggenheim Investments, Macro View Commentary (8/8/2013) […]
SEI Private Trust “Waiver of Lien” Communication
A number of you have been calling regarding the letter from Martin Whalen of SEI Private Trust. Knowing if ten clients call, 100 clients have the same question… we hope to clarify Mr. Whalen’s poorly written missive… The issue revolves around SEI Private Trust Company (SPTC) removing its right to apply a lien to IRA […]