The recent surge in gasoline prices suggests we might see a reversal in consumers’ years-long shift towards trucks or sports-utility vehicles back to more modest, fuel-efficient vehicles. But don't expect automakers to go along.
Apple Inc. is a $2.5 trillion company. To significantly boost that bottom line, the company has only so many opportunities it can pursue. Self-driving cars and mixed-reality glasses come to mind (as much as I love the Ted Lasso cinematic universe, it won’t move the needle). There’s another massive opportunity that the iPhone maker has been fairly mum on: crypto.
Do you know someone who is financially dependent on an advisor who views themself as a financial guru, has "the answers," demands loyalty and compliance to their recommendations, willingly takes charge of their financial life, and craves the attention and adoration of their clients? For the financially dependent, it's a match made in heaven – until it isn't.
Why do we still refer to so many firms in the advisory profession as broker/dealers?
Amy Bloom’s thought-provoking book, In Love, tells the story of the “accompanied” suicide of her husband, Brian Ameche. There are several life lessons from this book, some of which I doubt the author intended to convey.
For American consumers wondering who's profiting from the run-up in food prices, it’s instructive to spend a few hours at Rob Tate’s Minnesota farm. Because he wants everyone to know that it sure isn’t him.
Bank of Russia expanded its gold reserves almost sixfold since the mid-2000s, creating the world’s fifth-biggest stockpile that’s valued at about $140 billion. It’s the type of asset it could sell to shore up the ruble, which has plunged as global economies isolate Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.
While the U.S. has limited trade ties with Russia and Ukraine, businesses from beer breweries in Missouri to semiconductor plants in California would see an impact, as prolonged combat and even harsher sanctions constrict supplies and drive up global prices for oil and other critical materials.
I’m having an existential crisis with a few of my advisors.
For the past three weeks Tymofiy Mylovanov, president of the Kyiv School of Economics in Ukraine, has been witnessing the effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine firsthand -- working from within a war zone to bring desperately needed medical supplies to the country.
The Federal Reserve is poised to raise interest rates Wednesday for the first time since 2018, with investors focused on how aggressive central bankers plan to be in tackling the hottest inflation in four decades.
For all their daily volatility, U.S. stocks have been on a bumpy round trip to nowhere since Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine began three weeks ago. The S&P 500 Index, Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite Index have all been basically flat in the period.
We describe how an intentional and sustainable vision for diversity and inclusion at Wealthspire took form.
ICYMI: In this roundup, we’re highlighting the five most popular pieces of content from the previous week.
According to Sports Pro, 112 million people tuned in to watch the Bengals play the Rams in the 2022 Super Bowl. If two formerly mediocre, schlocky franchises can turn that many heads, there’s no way advisors shouldn’t be using more sports in their marketing.
If higher inflation persists, at least two mechanisms represent an ongoing risk to achieving expected real portfolio returns: Inflation will erode nominal returns and it will inflict a tax drag on assets.
The only certain way to ensure you, your organization or your product are thought of first is through frequent, repetitious contact.
As a financial advisor looking to jump to independence as an RIA, you have two doors from which to choose.
Prices paid to U.S. producers rose strongly in February on higher costs of goods, underscoring inflationary pressures that set the stage for a Federal Reserve rate hike this week. The producer price index for final demand increased 10% from February of last year and 0.8% from the prior month, Labor Department data showed Tuesday. That followed an upwardly revised 1.2% monthly gain in January.
The most important news for long-term investors is rarely in the headlines. Great contrarian plays rarely come from things most people don’t believe, rather they are based on things most people ignore.
Crypto markets still have many puzzles, but they are beginning to reveal their secrets. The last few months of chaos show what Bitcoin and other crypto assets are good for: They are advanced tools of globalization, luxury goods for complex, well-functioning markets — not protections against the depredations of hostile governments.
Since Wuhan two years ago, China has had relative success in minimizing disruption by bringing virus cases quickly under control. Now, the geographic spread of infections and higher transmissibility of the omicron variant is challenging the country’s hawkish pandemic strategy of aggressive testing and locking down whole cities or provinces.
As risks pile up for global equity markets -- from soaring inflation and central bank policy tightening to the economic fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine -- the list of indexes that have fallen into bear market territory is growing.
The classic 60/40 portfolio -- a strategy named for the share allocated to equities and high-grade debt, respectively -- is down more than 10% this year, leaving it on pace for the worst drubbing since the financial crisis of 2008.
Choice – more options – as the finest luxury of all. When an advisor helps a client, the door to better options and choices opens wide.
The surging volatility in the world’s biggest bond market is challenging traders trying to play both tighter global monetary policy and a war-induced commodity price shock that’s raising the specter of 1970s-style stagflation.
The Federal Reserve is in a deep hole of its own making as its top policy committee meets this week to announce the start of a long-anticipated cycle to raise interest rates. Inflation is at a 40-year high and still accelerating, the Fed’s inflation-fighting credibility is damaged, and it has lost control of the monetary policy narrative.
These are uncertain times, but we’ve never lived with less risk. That may sound crazy coming out of a pandemic that disrupted our lives in uncountable ways — and now we may be on the brink of World War III. But there is a big difference between risk and uncertainty, and each requires different coping strategies.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a much smaller conflict than World War I, and the trade disruptions associated with the U.S./European quasi-embargo on Russia are smaller than the British blockade of the Central Powers. But the clash is nonetheless a giant step away from globalization — and, unlike World War I, it comes at a time when the world has already been moving away from economic integration.
The extra yield offered by developing-nation sovereign debt over U.S. Treasuries has risen above 500 basis points, crossing a threshold breached only two other times in more than a decade. That’s drawing money managers including FIM Partners and Vontobel Asset Management to bet spreads will quickly tumble, just like they did following the previous spikes.
Corruption is “a cancer that eats away at a citizen’s faith in democracy,” said a certain vice president, back in 2014. Now commander in chief, Joe Biden must confront a corruption problem unfolding on his watch: the spiraling costs of misspent Covid funds.
An important part of tax planning is medical expenses, which add up quickly. Your clients (including spouses and dependents) will have medical expenses throughout the year, and hanging onto those receipts could save them money this year.
The failure to even mention nuclear energy as a solution for climate change is a mystery. What is the reason for this neglect of what would seem the world’s best hope for abating carbon emissions?
All geopolitical crises, including the current one, present three timeless lessons investors would be wise to heed.
Section 1202 of the Internal Revenue Code provides for an exclusion of up to $10,000,000 of capital gains (or, if greater, an exclusion of up to 10 times one’s basis) in connection with the sale of qualified small business stock (QSBS).
The extreme outperformance of commodities over the last several weeks has sparked interest in this asset class. New research finds that commodities are subject to lottery-like returns, providing information on future performance.
On March 1, two unrelated Securities & Exchange Commission actions set out the state of its thinking on enforcing the “best interest” and “fiduciary” standards.
While higher gas prices may be welcome news to the oil industry, the rest of us should be concerned. It is a glaring recession warning. Over the last 40 years, higher gas prices have been linked to economic stagnation and recessions.
A message from our CEO, Robert Huebscher, on the war on Ukraine.
After the close of regular trading Wednesday, Amazon.com shares surged as much as 10% after the internet giant announced plans for a 20-for-1 split. The company also said it would buy back up to $10 billion of its stock.
In Congressional testimony on March 2, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said that “it is more likely than not” that the central bank “can achieve what we call a soft landing” in the economy. In other words, he believes that the Fed can raise interest rates enough to get raging inflation under control without forcing the economy into a recession. The odds that Powell can pull that off are getting longer by the day.
Commodity prices have soared the last two weeks as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, drawing novice investors looking to make a quick buck. Many are already getting burned by their lack of knowledge.
The U.S. Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise interest rates by at least a 25 basis points next week. And if inflation stays high, the Fed is “prepared to raise by more than that” in the coming months, Chair Jerome Powell said last week.
After an unrelenting year of fighting off cyber threats, the financial services sector should expect more of the same or even worse, as nation-state hacking campaigns are expected to mirror geopolitical tensions and ransomware gangs retool to dodge increased scrutiny, according to an industry group report.
A historic surge in commodity prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, coming on top of already-high pandemic inflation, has gotten investors and economists searching for parallels with the energy shocks of four decades ago and the prolonged slowdowns that followed.
Gold fell from near a 19-month high as risk sentiment improved, despite ongoing concerns that the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will further fuel inflation and hurt economies.
Any increased capital spending by U.S. oil and gas producers in response to the surge in crude price should help soften the blow to the economy from an expected pullback in consumer spending. It just won’t be anytime soon.
The consumer price index, due Thursday, is forecast to accelerate to a 7.8% increase in February from a year ago, which would be the most since 1982. But economists are now saying it could peak somewhere in the 8%-9% range this month or next, as the invasion of Ukraine and severe restrictions on the Russian economy send the prices of staples like oil and food soaring.
Whether it was friends or total strangers, everyone seemed to have the same question for me on a recent trip. Is it time to buy the dip in stocks? After all, U.S. stock markets have already had a few encouraging bounces in the past two weeks of trading, though they proved both temporary and more than fully reversible.
The business of influencing cryptocurrency policy in Washington exploded last year and has more than quadrupled in the past four years, according to a new study.
