The 2015 Paris Agreement introduced the legally binding goal of maintaining the average global temperature below the pre-industrial revolution average plus 2o Celsius in order to avoid severe stress on natural and socioeconomic systems.
It isn’t hard these days to find investors trumpeting the demise of the decades-long bull run in Treasuries.
Uneven COVID-19 vaccination rates around the globe have led to diverging growth expectations for individual economies.
We’re more than ready to put the pandemic in the rearview mirror. For the first time since this all started a year ago, more than one million people per day have been flying commercial in the U.S. for 30 straight days.
President Biden’s massive $2.25 trillion infrastructure bill is on the tracks, rolling toward what many in Washington believe will be speedy passage in the House and Senate.
Within the growth-vs.-value context, we’d like to discuss three Covid-related scenarios for companies.
Dumb and Dumber was a 1994 movie which tells the story of Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey) and Harry Dunne (Jeff Daniels)
A new book explores the WeWork disaster, a bottomless money pit that has consumed billions upon billions of investor capital built largely on the spellbinding charisma of Adam Neumann, an Israeli entrepreneur.
Recently, a piece of collage art entitled “Everydays: The First 5000 Days,” by an artist known as Beeple, sold at a Christie’s auction for $69 million.
The last year brought exponential growth in, among other things, use of the word “exponential.” It is now the go-to term when you want to say something is “growing super-fast.”
The acceptance of digital currencies as a form of payment expanded greatly this week, foreshadowing the increasingly important role cryptos such as Bitcoin and Ether will play in our lives going forward.
Many high school seniors looking to attend the most competitive U.S. colleges are about to have their hearts broken after an already difficult year.
With a broad-based economic reopening coming closer into focus, investors are planning for the next stage in the cycle.
Addressing technical, idiosyncratic and structural aspects of inflation.
Data has shown that investment strategies that address ESG issues constitute a third of professionally managed U.S. assets. That has led some to claim that asset prices have been driven up to the point where investors should expect poor performance going forward. That narrative is false.
A woman to whom I was referred because she is facing a nasty divorce turns out to be a close acquaintance of mine.
Reflecting on the anniversary of the pandemic, revamped child benefits and how democracy fosters economic growth.
Revisiting Bengen’s “4% Rule” at various levels of risk aversion, and generalizing beyond a simple fixed-withdrawal, no-shortfall rule, to flexible rules at different levels of risk aversion.
I’m sick of the impoverished language that advisors use when trying to market themselves to business owners. Try these one-liners instead.
The U.S. economy is set for a hiring boom in the months ahead as the coronavirus pandemic recedes. There are signs it’s already underway.
The Rand Corporation’s been designing war games with the Pentagon since the 1950s, modeling such hard-nosed security scenarios as a two-front U.S. war with China and Russia. Now the think tank is turning its realpolitik tool kit to a question more often associated with environmental dreamers: How will clean energy change the world?
The latest surveys show most Americans who are eligible to receive the new $1,400 stimulus checks included in President Biden’s latest $1.9 stimulus plan are in favor of the upcoming government payments.
COVID-19 caused ripple effects throughout many industries and sectors, including automobiles.
A better appreciation of the history of market bubbles should help advisors and their clients sidestep some of the carnage when they inevitably burst. It is our intention in this article to take a more clinical approach by quantifying what we mean by a “bubble” solely in terms of market action. In that way, it is possible to compare conditions between individual markets and arrive at a rough standard. There are of course, many other aspects to bubbles and manias, several you can read about here.
For many clients, the most important benefits of a foundation are to ensure that the next generation will be responsible stewards of their values and wealth.
Relying on only historical U.S. returns creates an unrealistic picture of retirement outcomes. Our analysis shows that U.S. data are an anomaly among the broader global universe, and that our low-yield environment forebodes lower-than-average equity returns.
U.S. economic growth is accelerating as vaccinations rise and social-distancing measures ease, but hopes for a long-lasting spending boom may hit a couple of speed bumps. Vaccine rollouts in major countries are proceeding at different speeds, but stock market performance contradicts what vaccination data would seem to imply for investors. Meanwhile, inflation-adjusted longer-term Treasury yields have risen as investors anticipate stronger economic growth.
Global risk assets rose in the wake of positive developments on the two main fronts that have dominated headlines over the past 12 months – pandemic and stimulus.
Warren Buffett has been a fixture at the top of the world’s wealth rankings for decades, but in recent years he’s slipped down the list as tech fortunes soared and his hot hand cooled. Now, at 90, his net worth has blown past $100 billion.
The temptation to offer solutions for those facing a problem is overwhelming. Therein lies the trap for unwary advisors.
Rising yields and a steeper yield curve are par for the course as an economy enters the recovery phase of the global credit cycle.
Treasury yields rocketed higher in February, with the move again concentrated in longer maturities. Volatility spiked as liquidity dried up in the Treasury market, especially after a very weak 7-year auction that briefly pushed 10-year Treasury yields to 1.60%. The news flow was largely the same direction: an improving economy, increased vaccine rollout with deaths and hospitalizations turning sharply lower, and a continued march toward a substantial fiscal stimulus plan.
How does risk management work when risks change rapidly?
It’s pretty tough, one year deep into the global pandemic, to put a sunny face on the future of business travel. But for the people at American Express, the future of corporate travel looks … sort of fun?
Casey Harrell, the campaigner whose sustained pressure was instrumental in pushing BlackRock Inc. to act against climate change, approaches his work as if locked in a race against time. That was true even before the 42-year-old environmental activist was diagnosed last year with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Warren Buffett’s annual letter was great in all the easy ways and disappointing in the ways that matter the most to his shareholder partners
Yields have jumped so much, in fact, that they’re giving stocks a serious run for their money. The 10-year yield is now higher than the S&P 500 dividend yield, which may have added to the selling pressure that cost stocks close to 2.5% yesterday.
We hope you enjoy Harold Evensky's latest NewsLetter.
Even the most promising future can change drastically by a life-threatening event. A healthy individual may require around-the-clock care and supervision after an accident, creating the need to solve complex financial planning problems.
Target date funds should be designed to reduce the risk of rash selling.
I will break down the levels of a standard marketing funnel and provide specific steps that financial advisors can take to create their own.
The biggest slide in months for Cathie Wood’s funds is testing the resolve of investors who plowed billions of dollars into one of the hottest firms on Wall Street.
The energy sector is beginning to adapt to the realities of climate change. Who is best positioned for the future?
The GMO Asset Allocation Team has released its latest 7-Year Asset Class Forecasts through January 2021.
In late 2020, a new kid emerged on the bargain-of-the-decade block. UK stocks, and notably UK value, reached very cheap levels relative to value stocks in other developed economies. Today, UK value remains at remarkably low valuations relative to most of its fundamentals.
For a variety of reasons, many investors are worried about higher inflation. While we may see reflation (a pickup in prices that were restrained due to the pandemic), a significant increase in underlying inflation appears unlikely.
I offer 15 explanations for the bubble in stock prices and a single explanation for the one in bond prices. Those bubbles could deflate for any of 10 reasons I also identify, severely diminishing the retirement savings of baby boomers.
There are signs that the food inflation that’s gripped the world over the past year, raising prices of everything from shredded cheese to peanut butter, is about to get worse.
The Emerging Markets (EM) asset class is often labelled a commodity play for investment purposes. The argument is simple and directional; EM countries export commodities, so rising commodity prices are good for the asset class, whereas falling commodity prices hurt EM countries.
