Category: Weekly Investment Update

The president released the core goals of his tax plan last week. The outline was for the most part what had been expected. One pleasant surprise was the absence of the border adjustment tax which would have punished U.S. consumers. Many details remain to be fleshed out by Congress. At present, there are not enough […]

While the press has featured warnings of current stock market overvaluation, Stephen Auth of Federated Investors, makes the case for buying any dips in this secular bull market. Three of the points he makes are noted below while his full Market Memo can be found here. … the market continues to look relatively inexpensive if […]

The rally in stocks has taken a breather ahead of the release of first quarter earnings which will be in full swing beginning this week. FactSet’s latest expectations are for the S&P calendar year to have a revenue growth of 5.3% and the calendar year to have an earnings growth of 9.8%. At some point, […]

Diversification has been viewed as a necessary process for reducing risk. A recent study provides proof which shows diversification is also responsible for increasing returns. Morningstar’s John Rekenthaler, vice president of research, explored a recently published study by Arizona State University’s Hendrik Bessembinder titled “Do Stocks Outperform Treasury Bills?” The finding:  “Most common stocks do […]

The Federal Reserve raised the target rate for Federal Funds from a range of 0.50-0.75% to 0.75-1.00% at its March 15 FOMC meeting. Market interest rates as measured by U.S. Treasuries were mixed. During the quarter, the yield on the 13-Week T-Bill rose from 0.48% to 0.74% but the yields on the 10-Year Treasury and […]

Are you or is a loved one getting tired of spending the time and energy it takes to keep up with what seems to be the constant changes in life? Coping with the changes in markets and rates of return, income tax rates and reporting, retirement plan distribution rules, health care options, etc. can be […]

An important deadline is approaching for those who turned age 70-1/2 in 2016 and elected to postpone taking their first required minimum distribution (RMD) in 2016. Those deferred, first year distributions must be taken by April 1, 2017.  Since April 1 is a Saturday this year, make sure you take your distributions on or before […]

If you made a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) from your IRA to a charity be sure to let your tax preparer know about it. The IRS Form 1099-R you receive from your IRA trustee or custodian reports the full amount of any IRA distributions made as normal distributions. The form does not specify amounts distributed […]

In financial planning and investment management, process is far more important than product. There are no good rules of thumb when it comes to managing wealth. Every individual has various traits, family situations, educational and work experience and goals which, when taken as a whole, make each of us unique. There is no formula for […]

Market Fluctuation Due to multiple requests, we are going to rerun some market statistics we previously provided in our Weekly Updates. The first chart shows the frequency of historical market declines. Such declines are normal occurrences in public markets. So, when is the next correction going to begin? No one can consistently predict the start, […]