To Inform: I’ve always been fascinated by the weather and thunderstorms have always caught my attention. There is one thing I’ve never been able to understand about thunderstorms. Why is it that the skies are always at their darkest before the storm hits, while during the storm the sky tends to lighten? While undoubtedly there […]

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 Inform: As technology becomes a bigger part of our lives, so too do digital assets. What are digital assets? Almost anything that is stored online, on a computer, on a phone or really almost anything that has a login and a password can be considered a digital asset. Social media accounts, digital music, digital photos, […]

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 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 Inform: Last night we held our annual Oktoberfest Portfolios and Pints event. Friends filled the big room upstairs at the Hofbräuhaus as Alex and I drew questions out of a hat, and I deflected as many complicated questions as I could for Alex to answer. Topics we discussed ranged from economic indicators (side note: […]

To Inform: Last week, Alex Durbin and I attended the CFA (Chartered Financial Society) Society of Columbus’ Fall kick-off dinner. It was a gathering of investment professionals throughout Central Ohio representing state pension systems, large insurance companies, banks, and wealth managers. Tom Jalics, CFA, Chief Investment Strategist at Fifth Third Bank, entertained the audience with […]

To Inform: “Cash is Trash” – Ray Dalio, 2018, 2020, 2022 I always chuckle when investment gurus make definitive statements, usually at the top of a market trend. The quote above was tried out thrice by Ray Dalio, famous founder of the hedge fund shop Bridgewater. Dalio is no fool but in all those instances, […]