Keep It Simple
Keep It Simple “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.” -Groucho Marx I was at a dinner this summer with other portfolio managers from wealth management firms in the Denver area to talk about markets and investing. When we were asked if we invest in private markets on behalf…
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Medicare Overview 2023
What is Medicare? In our latest publication of Financial Intelligence, we referenced a document called “Medicare Overview and Local Resources 2023”. We are recirculating this Medicare reference guide as a standalone document below. Medicare is health insurance for the following: People 65 or older People under 65 with certain disabilities Learn more about Medicare here:…
Rolling with the Punches
Rolling with the Punches The Federal Reserve has raised the effective Fed Funds rate over the past 18 months from 0% to 5.33%. The 10-year US Treasury Yield just hit a 15-year high around 4.30%. Mortgage rates are back above 7%. Source: YCharts via Peak Asset Management If we had known that this is…
HSA Key Numbers 2024
The IRS recently updated its health savings account “HSA” limits for 2024 as well as the 2024 minimum deductible and maximum out-of-pocket amounts for high-deductible health plans (HDHPs). Below is a comparison of the key changes that you should be aware of: What’s changed for 2024? Here are the updated key tax numbers relating…
Quarterly Client Letter: Q2 2023
“Hindsight, the ability to explain the past, gives us the illusion that the world is understandable. It gives us the illusion that the world makes sense, even when it doesn’t make sense. That’s a big deal in producing mistakes in many fields.” -Daniel Kahneman Imagine you are the chief executive of the Finnish tire maker…
Fool Me Twice: The U.S. Housing Market
Fool Me Twice: The U.S. Housing Market As markets internalized the risks of COVID-19 in March 2020, stock prices for home construction companies crashed (proxied here with ITB, the iShares U.S. Home Construction ETF). A precipitous drop in economic activity is historically bearish for home builders; perhaps in understandable fashion, investors rushed to sell their…
Stock Review: VF Corporation
Stock Review: VF Corporation We’ve written in the past about our mindset of buying businesses as a way to ground and guide our investment philosophy. In that spirit, we’ve recently added a new business – VF Corporation (VFC) – to our model portfolio. VF Corp is an apparel company that owns outdoor and…
Quarterly Client Letter: Q1 2023
“Recent indicators point to modest growth in spending and production. Job gains have picked up in recent months and are running at a robust pace; the unemployment rate has remained low. Inflation remains elevated. The U.S. banking system is sound and resilient. Recent developments are likely to result in tighter credit conditions for households and…
How to Stay Safe During Tax Season
How to Stay Safe During Tax Season April is the time of year when people are gathering tax documents and filing forms with the IRS. Due to the rise in cybercrime, the IRS is reminding all taxpayers about potential scams and how to stay safe online during tax season. For a list of incidents and…
A Classic Bank Run
A Classic Bank Run By now you’ve likely seen the headlines or done some deeper digging into the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). As of Sunday, March 12th the Federal Reserve (Fed), in coordination with the US Treasury and Federal Depository Insurance Corporation (FDIC), has implemented a new program to provide liquidity to…
Is the Bear Market Over?
Is the Bear Market Over? The better question might be – did the bull market ever end? When you pull back and look at long-term averages for stock market indices like the S&P 500, the pullback in 2022 looks fairly benign. The 200-week simple moving average (SMA) is still pointing up and to the right,…
Why We Own Stocks
Why We Own Stocks “Because profits go up 8% a year, and stocks will follow. That’s all there is to it.” -Peter Lynch The latest tug of war in the financial punditry is between the “recession camp” and the “soft-landing camp”. In the recession camp we have consumers and corporations lowering their plans to…
Quarterly Client Letter: Q4 2022
“The margin of safety is always dependent on the price paid. It will be large at one price, small at some higher price, nonexistent at some still higher price.” It has been said countless times that, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” a quote attributed to Mark Twain. In reality, history occasionally does…