Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Boxing Day, and a Very Happy New Year to you all, be it Chinese, Mahayana, or Western! If we missed one, please let us know. We want to include everyone in our season’s greetings, as this is a time of togetherness and love. Regardless of what we may celebrate, we’re all on this tiny rock together. We encourage you to spend this holiday season forgetting our differences and celebrating our commonalities. And eggnog. Drink lots of eggnog. John, Bill, Mark & Melanie
Schwab Buys TD: What Now?
What It Means To You In a merger of two of the Big 4 independent custodians, Schwab is buying TD (Fidelity and Pershing are the other two). As a client, your investments with us are held at TD. So what does this merger mean to you? In the spirit of an “FOQ” (like this one, or this one), the short answer is…nothing. The long answer is that right now, for you, this deal looks cosmetic only. A year or two or five – yes, it may take that long – down the road, we may have a form to …
Don’t Be a Penguin!
The Dangers of Following the Herd We’ve heard it a thousand times before: “Well, I just picked that fund in my 401(k) because my co-workers did too”, or, “Everyone is buying weed stocks. I’m thinking of buying some too”. And the worst of them all: “The market is tanking. I want to sell”. It’s called “herding”. Like most of our innate behaviors, it has helped our species, and others, survive throughout the generations. When faced with a lack of information, we turn to the crowd to see what they’re doing, hoping to find some direction. It’s why penguins line …
Well, That Didn’t Work Out
A Cautionary Tale of “Chasing Returns” Just over five years ago, the New York Times published an article in which the author made the argument – successfully – that professional mutual fund managers cannot beat the market with any consistency or predictability. Old news, right? Yes, if you’ve been reading these blogs. But the article, which took into account the previous five years (March 2009-March 2014), pointed out that two funds had produced consistent, high-level returns during that timeframe, with both funds placing in the top quartile of returns each year. Of 2862 funds, no other funds accomplished that. …