Our headquarters in Newport Beach is only 50 miles from the Hollywood studios, although the drive can take up to two hours in rush-hour traffic. But far more than traffic separates the studios’ world from ours.

Over the last decade, the West has seen a series of tumultuous events. As these problems festered, unrest has been expressed through electoral surprises, while Russia has become more aggressive.

This will be the first in a series of articles where I will cover popular and/or high profile stocks. The primary objective of this series will be to put a spotlight on the importance of forecasting future growth prior to making an investment decision.

The exodus of CEO support following President Trump’s response to Charlottesville shook the foundations, but the stock market outlook has remained constructive. Every administration has its share of difficulties early on, many self-inflicted, before settling down.

To Belichick, the invisible aspects of team building and winning are as much as – or perhaps more important than – the visible aspects like talent, speed, and strength.

REITs are vulnerable to an increase in interest rates or an economic contraction. If you have been thinking of increasing your allocation to REITs to generate more cash flow, this new research – and current valuations – should serve as a cautionary warning.

With regard to the stock market, some people are true perma-bears while others merely adopt a bearish outlook when indicators suggest trouble ahead. There’s a big difference between the two.

For more than a decade and a half, my friend Alexander Green has been educating and entertaining investors as editor of numerous popular newsletters, many of which I’ve cited in my own writing.

When planning for retirement income, it helps to understand the various risks you may encounter, says Christine Russell, TD Ameritrade.

“Smart Beta” ETFs and their low-volatility ETF progeny may deliver a lower beta against their relevant benchmarks, but they’re not immune to bouts of volatility, and their returns frequently come up short.

Receding political anxiety and a gathering economic recovery in Europe helped global equity markets advance in the first half of 2017. Yet Templeton Global Equity Group’s Cindy Sweeting and Tony Docal say investors should be somewhat cautious in the second half of the year.

In this article, we examine whether it pays to account for differences in the path assets take to produce their momentum. All other things equal, do investors express a short-term preference for assets that have produced their returns with less risk, where risk is measured broadly as having delivered a smoother ride?

Over the past quarter century, large and ever-larger companies have significantly increased their share of total intra-industry sales across a majority of industries. These superstar firms – including Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Alphabet’s Google (known collectively as FAANG) – increasingly dominate their respective industries in terms of revenues, profits and stock market capitalization. The winner these days may not take all, but most.

Ladies and gentlemen, investing is a lot like whaling. Investors are constantly searching for that whale of a stock with the “right stuff” . . . aka the “ambergris factor.” Indeed, there have been many such “whales” on the Street of Dreams since the Royal Bank of Scotland’s “sell everything” advice at the January/February of 2016 stock market lows.

The LMCI is a relatively recent indicator developed by Federal Reserve economists to assess changes in the labor market conditions. As of August 3, 2017, updates of the labor market conditions index (LMCI) have been discontinuedThe LMCI is derived from a dynamic factor model that extracts the primary common variation from 19 labor market indicators.

For many years now a relatively large contingent of analysts, investors and journalists has been convinced the stock market was in a bubble because the "Shiller P-E" ratio was just too high. Back on 8/12/2013, in our Monday Morning Outlook, we made our case that the Shiller model was too pessimistic. Now that looks like a pretty good call.

In July, the Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) Non-Manufacturing Index fell to an 11-month low of 53.9, 3.5 points below its June reading of 57.4. The index measures the non-manufacturing, services industries such as food services, education, real estate, health care and more.

The macro data from the past month continues to mostly point to positive growth. On balance, the evidence suggests the imminent onset of a recession is unlikely.

Equity factors are increasingly used by investors to help guide their portfolio allocations. So it’s important to have a good grasp of what factors are and how they perform through an economic cycle, in order to invest effectively.

It seems like just a couple of months ago that I was writing about record highs for the Dow. In fact, looking at the data, it was only a few months ago, on January 26, that I wrote about Dow 20K. Reviewing that post, it notes that I last discussed stock market records 58 days before that. Are we seeing a pattern here?

Emerging Value and Margin of Superiority by Ben Inker and Why Are Stock Market Prices So High? by Jeremy Grantham

With energy setting records as the worst performing sector year-to-date, we were curious about Geopolitical Strategist Peter Zeihan’s thoughts on fossil fuels in the context of the United States’ continued retreat from the global theater.

Some argue that active management is a zero-sum game, so investing passively—relying on the wisdom of crowds—is better. How strong is that logic?

High yield is not responding to the fall in oil prices like it’s 2016. Russ talks why the pain point is lower today than 18 months ago.

Fourteen Loomis Sayles investment experts address the key issues they’re watching for the remainder 2017. Read on for their insights.

In our last post, we covered the importance of a well-designed investment universe as a precondition for thoughtful diversification. In this second article on Dynamic Asset Allocation for Practitioners, we will explore several methods for measuring price momentum to compare and contrast their utility under different portfolio concentration and asset universe specifications.

Having recently upgraded our view on developed international markets (hat tip to Jeffrey Kleintop), we are now recommending investors keep their allocations to all three major equity asset classes—U.S., developed international and emerging markets—in line with strategic targets.

How do we get our team to embrace our new CRM system and understand the value to our advisory firm?

Although the general concept of mortality credits is widely understood, the underlying math is not. Understanding the math can help with decisions such as the best age to purchase an annuity and which type of annuity to purchase. Such an understanding can debunk some popular beliefs about annuities.

We demonstrate a smart beta that produces positive excess returns from sustainably faster growth in EPS. This simple, systematic strategy represents a significant improvement from today’s growth indices that fail to produce faster growth in EPS and have provided negative excess returns.

I continue to believe that the two most important issues receiving inadequate investor attention are productivity and the role of central bank liquidity in the performance of financial markets. Productivity is critical to both earnings improvement and a rising standard of living.

After a strong first half to 2017 for equities, the message for the remainder of the year is to look for returns more carefully in the second half says Neil Dwane, global strategist for Allianz Global Investors. The “country factor” will be key: We believe investors can no longer rely on a rising tide of cyclical data to lift all boats.

In 2012 we published a whitepaper entitled “Adaptive Asset Allocation: A Primer” in which we built upon the simple, robust momentum framework proposed by Mebane Faber in his 2009 study “Relative Strength Strategies for Investing.”

If you’re like many working Americans, you may be concerned about the state of Social Security and whether it will be there for you when you retire. Gail Buckner, CFP, our personal retirement and financial planning strategist, explores some myths about Social Security and eases some concerns about its future.

The debate between active and passive management in fixed-income continues. We take a look at both sides of the coin for investors.

Typically, U.S. Presidents are wary of claiming stock market performance as a referendum on their success. Most have seemed to understand that taking credit also means accepting blame, and no one would want to make the tortured argument that the positive moves reflect well on their presidency but that the negative moves do not.

What explains the fact that municipal bond yields are only slightly lower than equivalent Treasury bonds, giving muni investors a much higher taxable-equivalent yield? The answer lies in their liquidity, which is good news, especially for buy-and-hold investors of individual bonds.

Today’s risks are clear: stock valuations are high, credit spreads are tight and interest rates remain low. A modest tilt toward return-seeking assets still makes sense. But investors should also be willing to look beyond traditional stocks and bonds.

The Federal Reserve is likely to begin normalizing its balance sheet in 2017. Why hasn’t this news rattled the bond market?

“It is a Riddle, Wrapped in a Mystery, Inside an Enigma: but Perhaps There is a Key” - Winston Churchill

Some good data below so I won’t draw out this intro. Stay focused overseas. Keep an eye on earnings which will hopefully be better than the reception that the big banks received on Friday. (But don’t worry, the bank disappointments were interest margin and loan growth caused, not credit related.)

Andrew Susser manages the MainStay High Yield Corporate Bond Fund (MHCAX). Over the last 15 years, the fund has ranked in the 12th percentile of its Morningstar peer group; its annualized return was 8.45%, 395 basis points ahead of the AGG and 95 basis points greater than its peer-group average. In this interview, he discusses the opportunities in the high-yield market.

Markets seem not to care what the media or polls have to say. The Dow Jones Industrial Average continues to hit new all-time highs. Even though it’s stalled a few times, the “Trump rally” appears to be in full-speed-ahead mode, more than eight months after the election.

With Market Indices at or Close to All-Time Highs, Investors Puzzle Over the Course Ahead. Meanwhile, The Slow-Growth Economy Is Perceived as the New "Goldilocks Scenario."

After a long period of “riding the wave” of central bank liquidity, investors are now confronted with much more difficult decisions. Andrew Lo’s new book, Adapative Markets, provides an excellent framework from which to analyze the current situation, evaluate market risks and prepare for changes.

Market risks come in three flavors—recession risk, economic shock risk, and risks within the market itself. Using a red light/yellow light/green light system, this monthly post explores the risk level in the markets, based on a number of factors.