To Inform: With the S&P 500 mired in a bear market, JP Morgan Chief Market Strategist Marko Kolanovic generated buzz in recent weeks with his call that U.S. stocks would recover recent losses in the 2nd half of 2022 and finish the year largely unchanged. Kolanovic has notoriety in investment strategy circles as the No. […]

To Inform: I recently got the chance to visit a timberland site in southeast Ohio with a group of investment professionals. On this visit were a number of professional foresters. One person asked the foresters about tree growth in regenerating timber stands. The forester gave an answer and connected it to what is going on […]

To Inform:   Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend the Ohio Institutional Investment Forum – a one day conference for large pension and endowment fund managers across the state. Speakers included the Chief Investment Officer for the Ohio State University endowment, the Executive Director of the Ohio School Employees Retirement System and senior investment […]

To Inform: If you’ve been reading these WealthNotes for a while, you may have gotten a sense that we value contrarian thinking when it comes to investing. This is never easy to do – human nature makes it very hard to zig when the rest of the crowd is zagging. But sometimes that is precisely […]

To Inform:  Over the last two days I had the opportunity to attend an investment conference in Newport, Rhode Island. It was a smaller, more intimate gathering consisting of financial advisors and fund managers from across the country. At dinner last night I talked to a former executive from Lehman Brothers during the 2008 financial […]

To Inform: There’s a scene in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Rings where Frodo and the Gang are deep in the Mines of Moria and under attack from all sides. In the movie, the actor portraying Boromir says in a sardonic tone, “They have a Cave Troll.” No big deal, the hits […]

To Inform: From someone who loves to travel, it seems only natural to liken financial planning to the airline industry. Financial planning is like being an airline pilot. You need a flight plan, must know where you’re going, check all of your gauges and make corrections when you run into turbulence. Here at the Joseph […]

To Inform: In recent days, I feel like I’ve observed multiple examples of “opposite extremes.” Late afternoon on Wednesday I had a headline flash on the CNBC app I use to track stocks and asset classes on my phone: “Stocks have best day since 2020!”  Just 24 hours later, on Thursday afternoon, I had a […]

To Inform: It’s possible this has been said before in another time and place, but I like to think the maxim “You should always own something you don’t like” is an original thought of mine. An important corollary might be “be careful owning something everyone else loves”. I must say, however, that this rule should […]

To Inform: Like a spring morning rejoicing in the retreat of winter, we rejoice in the recent close of so-called “tax-season”. This past Tuesday, tax off-season began for most people. For financial professionals, especially CPAs, tax off-season is at best fleeting and at worst non-existent, much like springtime in our home state. Most folks, though, […]