In our advisory work, we find two perspectives provide the basis for determining a level of exposure to investment risk appropriate for each client: capacity to take on investment risk and willingness to take on that risk. While capacity can be seen as more quantitative in its basis, an assessment of risk tolerance generally is […]
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The relative performance of our favored equity characteristics have set a few records over the past year, with small-cap and value-oriented stocks having found renewed favor among investors. Perhaps that should not come as a surprise, given the lengthy period of underperformance that both factors had and still have been experiencing. Despite the nearer-term relative […]
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We long ago learned that adhering to an existing plan, seeking to make adjustments only where truly necessary, remains the smarter course for achieving investment success. Often, that means retaining an investment strategy when it can feel the most uncomfortable to do so. But while that discomfort might seem unbearable for a time, history shows […]
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Starting just about at the bottom of the dramatic plunge at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the prior twelve months have proved remarkable from a total return standpoint. In the latest quarter, stocks furthered a ramp out of the downturn’s trough. Though domestic stocks continued to rise in 2021, international stocks furthered their strong […]
The rule that all investing carries risk applies even to bonds. The negative price impact of rising rates over the past few months proves that case well. Even so, bonds in our view remain a fine compliment to equity exposures for those wishing to dampen overall portfolio volatility. To this day bond price swings remain […]
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Even without the pandemic or the U.S. election, market returns alone would have made 2020 an abnormal year. Adding to their peculiarity, though, was the fact that global equity markets at one point in 2020 had lost a third of their value from a prior peak. The historic drawdown and the ensuring gargantuan rally, all […]
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For a moment, you'd have thought there were no other stocks in the world. Though a handful of names were caught up in what's proved so far to have been a short-lived frenzy, one dominated headlines. And by dominated, we mean to suggest it seemed there was no other news, as electronic gaming retailer GameStop […]
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Via this update to our investment models, we have sought to boost flexibility to bolster income potential across the model spectrum. Among the more aggressive models (as defined primarily via exposure to equity), we have consolidated positions that maintained potentially more aggressive exposures to credit and duration risk. We similarly expanded such flexibility among less-aggressive […]
Take out global viral contagion and the U.S. presidential election and we still had a bonkers year from an equity market return standpoint. Fixed income, too, as interest rates fell at one point to forever lows, reflecting grand concern that economies around the world would need tremendous support to weather the activity-destroying effects of the […]
Amidst a year of unprecedented turmoil, the domestic stock market experienced what may in hindsight be considered its requisite volatility. U.S. stocks saw two separate declines of 5 percent or more, and a maximum decline of more than 34 percent from a peak in February to a late-March trough. The market nonetheless turned in a […]
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