Readers of a certain age will remember Carnac the Magnificent, Johnny Carson’s recurring alter ego.
Sandpiles can be fun. Nothing beats taking kids to the beach (or being a kid!) and watching their creativity blossom into all kinds of magical shapes. The problem with sand construction is it doesn’t last. I have it on good authority that building your house on the sand probably won’t end well.
In a recession, you must know what mistakes to avoid to protect your 401k.
What will happen to the clients of advisors who don’t have a formal succession plan in place?
The Harvard Business Review is celebrating its 100th birthday with a fat book of its most influential and innovative articles and an electronic fanfare of videos, charts and online articles.
There's a new religion in economic policymaking. It's a more modern view of supply-side economics with converts on both the right and the left. But what that means and how to achieve it is dividing policymakers.
On August 16th, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, ending months of uncertainty over whether congressional Democrats would ever reach agreement on a compromise budget reconciliation bill.
One investment with the ability to provide current income, inflation protection, and even the potential for capital appreciation has been largely overlooked – rising dividend stocks.
As banks get burned from financing billion-dollar buyouts and pension funds grow impatient with private equity’s endless thirst for capital, skepticism is growing louder over the industry’s performance — and whether some of their daredevil deals could result in disastrous losses for their financiers.
The U.S. dollar has been on a tear in recent months, bringing it to its highest valuation versus other major developed currencies in more than 35 years.
In times like these, I’m reminded of Robert Rubin. The former US Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration was unequivocal that a strong dollar was in the country’s best interests, and the government should be careful not to undermine trust in the currency.
Who is the real “change candidate” after 12 years of Conservative government in the UK: Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition Labour party? Or Liz Truss, the fourth successive Tory prime minister?
It’s a binary world. To an extreme extent, opinions on the market are divided, and they are split on one key issue: Will the Fed have to “pivot” toward easier monetary policy in the next few months, or won’t it?
What lessons for today? Any intervention in foreign exchange markets must be credible to have any chance of working. And when the Fed takes a course that is out of sync with the rest of the world, stresses increase on the rest of the foreign exchange architecture.
“Price matters again in investing,” according to Bob Wyckoff a managing director of Tweedy, Browne. “That serves the interests of value investors.”
Today, about 1% of our vehicles are electric. What will happen in 2035 when many more EVs need to be charged, potentially during another heatwave?
Many ask if Jerome Powell can emulate Volcker. We will certainly find out. But much has changed in 42 years. Does Powell even need to emulate Volcker? Here, some prominent economists disagree. Today we’ll talk about the issues.
Normally, this section of Point of Return closes the newsletter. Not today. If there was ever a great survivor, it was Elizabeth II, who has passed away after seven decades as Queen of England.
September has historically been one of the worst months for stocks. The Fed’s aggressive moves and upcoming midterm elections could make this September particularly interesting.
I will share some ideas for how create a special event to honor a client.
Here are the top five mistakes I’ve made in my practice and ways you can prevent them altogether.
My article, “The Trial of Ken Fisher for Crimes Against Annuities,” marked the beginning of my effort to aggressively defend annuities against criticisms that had become too exaggerated, too longstanding, and too inaccurate to be left unchallenged.
2022 may be remembered as the year when living standards in the US truly pulled away from those in Western Europe. One concrete piece of evidence is the collapse of the euro to parity with the dollar, or lower yet, but there is also a more general sense that the gap is widening.
A strong culture is key to inspiring the team and workplace of tomorrow.
Our own government cannot afford a short end of the curve much higher than it is now, and our own fiscal and monetary decisions have held down the long end of the curve in what I believe is a multi-decade period ahead that is best referred to as “Japanification”
“The Godfather” has a quote for everything. Maybe, just maybe, it was Putin all along. Or perhaps its was Nikolai Kondratiev.
It’s been a tough first half of the year, with the MSCI All Country World Index down by 21.7% and the Bloomberg Global Treasury benchmark losing about 9% as of June 17.
With more Commission-Free annuities available than ever before, many RIAs are discovering the benefits these solutions can provide not only to their clients, but also to their firms. Join this session to learn how RIAs can use Commission-Free annuities to manage portfolio risk, helping protect and grow AUM. These strategies can help RIAs attract and retain clients and deliver better outcomes during accumulation and retirement.
The bipartisan Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors for America Act, or CHIPS Act, was signed into law this week, setting aside $52 billion to boost domestic semiconductor research and production.
The latest data shows inflation is still with us at an 8.5% annual rate. That means we can expect the Fed to keep tightening, trying to reduce demand and relieve pressure on consumer prices.
With the Senate having passed a budget plan yesterday with only Democratic votes as well as a tie broken by Vice President Harris, it is only a matter of time before President Biden signs the first significant tax hike since the “Fiscal Cliff” tax hike in early 2013.
Even if a downturn is narrowly avoided, high inflation and falling asset values have already destroyed wealth and made everyone poorer.
During market downturns, financial pundits can often make you feel like the world is ending.
Have you seen a situation where the person running the advisor team is former college football star and every single story – I mean every one – is about football?
Here are nine little-known high-earning professions you should be considering as target markets.
I recently was asked by Patrick Schotanus of Edinburgh Business School to participate in their inaugural symposium on the subject of cognitive economics. The symposium took place at Panmure House, the final residence of the great economist Adam Smith, and the theme was the Market Mind Hypothesis (MMH), which Patrick developed.
After underestimating the worst inflation outbreak in decades, central banks are now driving their economies headlong toward recession in order to tame prices.
During Tesla’s quarterly results webcast this week, Musk admitted to dumping some $936 million of Bitcoin to raise cash out of concern of an economic pullback due to pandemic lockdowns in China.
“Desengaño” was noted by one Antonio Garcia Martinez in his most excellent book, Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley, as a unique style of Spanish genre painting.
If you were considering taking the family on a European vacation, now may be a good time, as the U.S. dollar and euro achieved parity this week for the first time in 20 years.
The SPAC market is off to a brutal start to 2022, but a few bright spots with key similarities may point to a way out of the morass -- find solid businesses with room to grow.
For a generation of alienated techies, crypto's all-for-one ethos was its biggest draw. Now panic is spreading across this universe — and that same ethos is posing what may be the biggest threat yet to its survival.
Latin America tilted further left this week as Colombian voters elected Gustavo Petro as president. Come August, the former Bogotá mayor and member of the M-19 guerrilla organization will join the region’s growing list of leftist leaders in a political shift some are likening to the “pink tide” of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Interest rates aren’t simply the price of borrowing money. They are also information, providing signals telling economic players what to do. Interest rates are in fact the price of time. Low interest rates don’t value time very much. Bad signals produce bad outcomes… and that’s where we are now.
Lifetime income solutions are high on the wish lists of defined contribution (DC) plan participants, with the certainty of a guaranteed lifetime income stream ranking as the top feature in our surveys over the past decade.
Here’s how to position yourself for a lifetime of relationships by creating better touchpoints with a client’s family.
The yellow metal has managed to stay positive since the start of the year, skirting pressure from surging yields and a strong U.S. dollar. Meanwhile, nearly every other asset class has fallen into either correction or bear market territory.
Investors are shifting their focus from runaway inflation to slowing global growth as central banks hike rates to tame price pressures.
High inflation has captured the headlines as of late particularly as CPI recently hit the highest levels since 1981.
The parallels between the 2020s and the 1970s grow more numerous by the day. The economy faces the threat of stagflation. Fuel prices are surging, and shortages loom. Politicians are flailing. The international environment is deteriorating. The Supreme Court is revisiting the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.
