Many wealthy clients, especially owners of closely-held firms, have interests in subchapter-S corporations. The tax policies proposed by the Trump administration will have a significant impact on them, according to Toni Nitti.

The IMF has resurrected an old technique – commonly used in the 1980s during the Latin American debt crisis – that will allow Greece to avoid a payment default next month on debt owed to European creditors. But the Fund’s elegant compromise still leaves Greece under the shadow of an enormous debt overhang.

In this month’s Global Economic Perspective, Franklin Templeton Fixed Income Group examines whether inflation may gain momentum in the United Sates, why it’s pleased the European Central Bank has resisted tapering of its quantitative easing program and why investors in all markets need to be cognizant of political risks.

To say that value is difficult to find in the global equity markets would be an understatement. In fact, when we look at all 44 of the developed market regions and regoin/sectors, what we find is that in only ten of them is the median company trading at a discount to its own 10-year average multiple.

Most investors understand the implications of the Fed raising (or lowering) interest rates. After lowering short-term interest rates to near zero in late 2008, and keeping them there for eight years, the Fed is now committed to “normalizing” short-term rates by raising the key Fed Funds rate multiple times over the next couple of years.

All eight indexes on our world watch list have posted gains year-to-date for 2017 (through June 19). The top performer thus far is China's Hang Seng with a gain of 17.84% in 2017, followed by India's BSE SENSEX not far behind at 17.60%. In third is our own S&P 500 with 9.59%.

The last two weeks of June are usually a good time to recharge the batteries and get away. Unfortunately, last week kept many of those out of the office attached to their smartphones and their boats tied up at the docks.

During the most-recent Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Meeting, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger reiterated a point during the question and answer portion that has stuck with us. We feel compelled to share what we learned.

Tech "wreck?" That's a bit of a stretch in my opinion; but the financial media loves a good headline. The major ascent—and recent pullback—of the so-called FAANG stocks (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google) has generated much attention; and lately, the subject of technology stocks more broadly has dominated Q&A sessions at events at which I've spoken.

Recently the word “they” has surfaced with the media; THEY are influencing elections, THEY colluded with the Russians, THEY are selling U.S. dollars, THEY are manipulating markets, THEY are buying bonds, and a week and a half ago THEY sold the tech stocks causing sort of a minicrash as whispers of a “bubble” careened down the canyons of Wall Street.

With soft housing data last week and higher interest rates expected, it is a good time to ask: Is the housing rally over?

Back in December 2016, we discussed our expectation for lower longer-term US interest rates, which we used to justify an aversion to financial stocks. This expectation played out.

The potential for inflation to rise in coming years poses a threat to long-term investment portfolios, says Jeff Holt of Morningstar.

Last week the Federal Reserve hiked the federal funds rate by ¼ of a percentage point for the fourth time since December 2015. The funds rate is still below the rate of inflation, which means the Fed is still a long way from becoming tight.

Portfolio Manager Chuck Royce discusses why financials continue to play an important role in his portfolios.

Year-to-date through 6/9/17, the Russell 2000 Index advanced 5.3%. More than half of that result, however, has come during a so-far highly bullish June.

There is a small but growing community of advisors who are leaving behind the old ways of picking managers in an effort to give their clients something they can’t get on their own or from a robo-advisor.

As history demonstrates, conformity to the irrational can and often does persist beyond conceivable limits, yet incoherence of behavior is not sustainable indefinitely.

I bet if most of us really focused, we could cut down our workweek from five days to two. Performance would improve, our personal lives would get better, and those eventual heart attacks would be pushed back a decade or two.

It has become conventional wisdom that underperformance is due to the irrational investment behavior of individuals. For the creation and propagation of this conventional wisdom, we have DALBAR to thank. Now that Wade Pfau has shown that DALBAR’s research is likely to be worthless because it calculates its numbers wrong, it is time to question whether the conventional wisdom has even a scintilla of meaning.

As I discussed this past weekend, the current “bull market” seems unstoppable. Even on Twitter, investors have once again been lulled into the “complacency trap.”

Fed hikes rates again, even as inflation falls further from target and financial conditions continue to ease. Smooth sailing ahead? Beware the leverage risks building below the surface.

As I listened to a number of the presentations at last month’s Strategic Investment Conference, silver and gold kept coming up. As did the industrial metal, copper. Make new friends but keep the old… today’s On My Radar continues the sharing of my high level conference notes with you. I walked away with some actionable ideas. Gold and silver were high on the list. The new friend is copper.

If you’ve attended as many advisor conferences as I have, you know that panel discussions featuring speakers whose firms have booths in the exhibit hall are rarely more than a “pitch fest” – an opportunity for panelists to promote their firms’ strategies. However, a panel on alternative investments at the Pershing conference last week was an exception.

After a decade of lagging relative returns, value equities delivered impressive performance in 2016, outperforming growth stocks by 10% in the US.

The Fed does not have to make guesses about exactly what is required to normalize its balance sheet, except to the extent that it ignores a century of evidence.

As I travel around the country to meet with institutional clients, I often hear this question: “What is everyone selling? Because that’s something I’m really interested in buying.” These are clients who have the confidence and experience to contradict the herd mentality that causes many investors to chase market returns (which often results in buying near market tops while selling near market bottoms).

Russ discusses why many technology stocks have tumbled recently, without any obvious reason.

Ttoday we’ll have a little Minsky refresher and look at some recent danger signs. And I predict that we will soon see Minsky mentions popping up everywhere.

NDX has opened a noteworthy crack in US equities. NDX has fallen 4.5% in the past week. In the past 7 years, falls of more than 4% in NDX have preceded falls in SPY of at least 3%. That doesn't sound like much, but it would be the largest drop so far in 2017. A key watch out now is whether NDX weakens further and breaks both its 50-d as well as its mid-May low; if so, then SPY is likely to follow with its first 5% correction since the US election.