To Inform: At this week’s Portfolios at Panera, TJG’s Portfolio Manager, Aaron Filbeck, led our discussion that focused on one dimension of the portfolio construction process: active vs. passive management in The Joseph Group’s objective-based portfolios. As a quick refresher, the primary objective of a passive manager is to replicate the performance of an index, […]

To Inform:  Earlier this week, JP Morgan released its Global Asset Allocation Views for the 2nd quarter.  Overall, JP Morgan is slightly defensive in their views and recommend a slight overweight to bonds and a slight underweight to stocks as they expect markets to remain “range-bound” in the months ahead.  As we read through their […]

To Inform: Earlier this week, three members of The Joseph Group team (Mark Palmer, Aaron Filbeck, and Travis Upton) attended the 6th Annual Ohio Institutional Investment Forum.  The event largely consisted of panel discussions of Chief Investment Officers and Portfolio Managers from organizations such as The State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio, the Cleveland Clinic, […]

To Inform:  The global stock market has had a terrific start in 2019, with the MSCI All Country World Index returning over 7% in January and adding to those gains in February.  The key question on investors’ minds is “will the stock market gains continue?” As we discussed at a recent “Portfolios and Pints” event, […]

To Inform:  So far in 2019, stock prices have gone up but analyst estimates of corporate earnings across the world have been declining.  The chart below looks at MSCI World (the entire global stock market) earnings estimates for 2019.  Since October, the estimate for global earnings has fallen from about $144 per share to $137 […]

To Inform:  The S&P 500 rebounded +7.9% in January after a large drawdown of -9.2% in December. Those are some big numbers for one month periods, but neither should really be considered “normal.” Source: Payden & Rygel   The chart from Payden & Rygel is a nice visual of the historical monthly returns dating back […]

To Inform:  At last week’s Portfolio’s at Panera event, we asked the attendees to be Portfolio Managers for the morning.  Each client/friend of The Joseph Group was given a worksheet and was asked if they were managing an investment portfolio, whether they would be “Overweight,” “Underweight,” or “Neutral” across four primary asset classes.  The discussion […]

To Inform:  So far in 2019 the market for stocks and other risky assets has rallied and is beginning to recoup losses from late last year after ending 2018 with the worst December for the S&P 500 since 1931.  In the Joseph Group’s Investment Strategy Team meetings, we often like to look below the surface […]

To Inform:  This WealthNotes “To Inform” piece is likely to run a little longer than normal as we take a look back at the sharp market correction that culminated 2 weeks ago, discuss what we are seeing in markets today, and share how we are positioning portfolios going forward. Looking Back: The Grinch certainly stole […]

To Inform:  During yesterday’s Federal Reserve announcement on interest rates, members of The Joseph Group team gathered around the TV in our team area to watch the announcement and the market reaction.  At 2:00 pm, the announcement came across that the Fed was increasing the Fed Funds rate by 0.25% (from 2.25% to 2.50%) and […]