To Inspire: People around the world came up with creative ways to pass the time during the COVID-19 lockdown. Silver Springs, Maryland retiree Manuel Vera turned his attention to bicycles, and today he provides free bikes for people in his community. Vera was just looking for something to fill his time, and thought offering to […]
To Inform: Many of our clients, and all future retirees, could benefit from a provision of Secure Act 2.0 that will allow increased 401(k) contributions to a specific subset of retirement plan investors for the first time in 2025. For several years now, retirement investors have been able to take advantage of catch-up contributions […]
To Inspire: I (Matt) just finished my first book of the New Year, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer. Wow…what a helpful book for any of you who, like me, find themselves too rushed and too busy. My next couple of Wealth Notes missives will be on excerpts from this book – […]
To Inform: A question I like to ask money managers and market strategists is “what is your most contrarian opinion?” Howard Marks, the investor who helped pioneer junk bond investing and is one of the “rock stars” in the investment world, wrote, “If your behavior is conventional, you’re likely to get conventional results—either good or […]
To Inspire: Most scientific discoveries take years of research and testing, but there are some well-known accidental discoveries that have made big impacts on our lives. The discovery of penicillin, credited as the beginning of modern medicine, happened when Alexander Fleming went on vacation and left a Petri dish uncovered. Vulcanized rubber came about when […]
To Inform: Earlier this week, we hosted a Portfolios at Your Place event where Partner and CEO Travis Upton and Chief Investment Officer Alex Durbin captured five themes from the past and five new themes, all of which are relevant today. I would like to take this opportunity to focus on one of them titled, […]
To Inform: Early in 2023 we talked about why it was a better time to own bonds than it had been in years prior, especially 2022, the worst year on record for bond returns. That indeed was the case in 2023 as investment grade bond indexes were up a little more than 5% and high […]
To Inspire: A Happy New Year from all of us at The Joseph Group. Last night I (Matt) watched the Orange Bowl – which featured two very good football teams – Penn State and Notre Dame. A great game – which Notre Dame won 27-24 on a last second field goal. The field goal was […]
To Inform: This Wealthnotes title, “Absolutely Positive, Relatively Frustrating,” reflects both returns and my mood as I look at markets to close out 2024. Investment returns are often described as absolute or relative. Absolute simply means positive or negative, and in the absolute case, every major asset class posted positive returns in 2024 (although some […]
To Inspire: Welcome to 2025 and welcome to the season of New Year’s resolutions. Articles recommending the best resolutions to make have been inundating email and social media for the past couple of weeks. My favorite resolution list arrived in my email early January 1, titled “65 Achievable New Year’s Resolutions You’ll Actually Keep.” Sixty-five! […]