To Inform:  Earlier this week Alex Durbin facilitated our regular Investment Committee meeting. As part of the agenda, we discussed asset class views which form the basis of positioning for the objective based portfolios we have the privilege of managing for clients. We then did a deep dive, comparing those views to those of various […]

To Inspire: What follows is an article many of you may have seen in the New York Times, edited it a bit for length and content. At The Joseph Group we encourage our clients, no matter what age, to find purpose and passion in their lives. We believe retirement years provide the opportunity to do so. We […]

To Inform:  Dr. Ed Yardeni, a fixture on Wall Street for decades, is credited with coining the phrase “bond vigilante” in 1983. Bill Clinton’s political adviser James Carville said in 1994 that if he could be reincarnated it wouldn’t be as president, or the pope, or a .400 baseball hitter, but as the bond market […]

To Inform: September was not a good month for the financial markets. Looking at broad indexes, the Bloomberg Aggregate Bond Index (bonds) was down -2.5% for the month and the S&P 500 Index (U.S. stocks) was down -4.5%. The rough September translated into a rough third quarter. The chart below shows the performance of major […]

To Inspire: What book are you reading right now? I ask because the older I get, the more convinced I am that reading is a practice that provides tons of benefits. Consider the following: Reading improves brain health – Reading is great workout for the brain, stimulating our brains to process, interpret and store what […]

To Inspire: Think about the way a child reacts when they see something for the first time. An animal at the zoo, a colorful flower, or a big fire truck – they are full of wonder for everything they encounter. Why do we lose that wonder as adults? “A sense of wonder speaks of our […]

To Inform: Following markets for the last 25 years, there have been a lot of flashes in the pan that have come and gone. You might be able to recall some of the companies which dominated headlines in the halcyon days of the Tech Boom. A select few may even remember the “Nifty Fifty” of […]

To Inform:  I (Ryan) recently graduated from Mount Vernon Nazarene University where I studied financial planning. While our program was focused primarily on the technical side, we also spent some time on the social and relational aspects of financial planning. As part of the program we read a book by Mitch Anthony called “The New […]

To Inspire: Lisa’s sister is in for the weekend, arrived last night. The three of us stayed up till midnight – catching up on our families and simply enjoying being together. We laughed, loved, and shared deeply and as we all headed to bed we agreed that our conversation had been a real treat – […]

  In the retirement plan advisory business, there are three types of plan advisors. The first is the traditional plan investment advisor. This type of advisor will simply monitor the plan’s core menu of funds and make recommendations on when/what to change. The second is more of a plan specialist role. They’ll manage the plan’s […]