Category: Investor Updates

Footnotes – January 2025

Today’s Presentation is titled “The All-Weather Portfolio.”  During our “First Friday” meeting today, we will discuss the opportunities and risks of investing in an overvalued market. 

Our goal is to discuss tactics that will allow intelligent investors to remain invested during overvalued markets while lessening investment risks for those who want to make sure they don’t have to go back to work and make it all over again. 

2025 promises to be a challenging year as most public markets are priced for perfection and speculation is abundant.

Footnotes – December 2024

Today’s Presentation is titled “2025 Economy, Valuation, Geopolitics.  What’s Next.” 

This month we want to spend our time together by taking a look at three of the most important variables which determine each family’s investment allocation. 

We will start by taking a shot at understanding what investors might expect from the new administration entering the White House in January. 

This was the most often asked question – and for good reason.  New administrations tend to make many promises.  These promises tend to engender incredibly lofty expectations. 

Over time, however, reality sets in.   The realization that most of the promises are unobtainable.

Footnotes – November 2024

As we mentioned last month, we are going to discuss risks everyone is aware of – yet very few investors are actually prepared for. 

So, we going to start off with a question which may make you feel a bit uncomfortable, yet which is important to ask – and to have answered.  

Are you prepared for an unpleasant future to become a reality which we all fear?   

If your answer is no, why not?  Are you sure this unpleasant future will not happen?

Footnotes – October 2024

In our discussion today, we are going to discuss several risks everyone is aware of – yet no strategist, portfolio manager, or analyst is actually prepared for. 

These risks we are referring to are not new.  They are well-known risks standing right in front of us and staring us right in the face.  Yet, because these risks have not happened during our lifetimes, very few have prepared their investment portfolios for the possibility that these risks will happen.

Footnotes – August 2024

Today, we want to discuss some of the alternatives available to intelligent investors and remind Family Office members what the signals are telling us, while answering several of the questions we hear most often.

Footnotes – June 2024

June’s “First Friday” meeting discussed the prevalence of illusions.  Illusions combined with clever narratives frequently charm the best of us.  And when you mix market appreciation with narratives focusing solely on the positives, realities surrender to perceptions. 

Over the course of history, prosperity has discouraged demanding work.  Lax behavior goes unpunished.  Eventually this behavior leads to the downfall of every great civilization.i  And while this discussion is not insinuating America’s decline, it focuses on the “recency-bias” created by prosperity, and the lack of due diligence and critical thinking prosperity encourages.

Footnotes – May 2024

May’s “First Friday” meeting focused on Identifying the categories of companies, public and private, most likely to become the winners and losers in the Artificial Intelligence world which is unfolding in front of us in real time. 

While May’s “First Friday” meeting focused on Artificial Intelligence’s technological leap forward, it reminded everyone watching that significant changes in technological advances usher in changes which are unplanned.  They will be, mostly positive.  However, there could be negative changes also.  The one certainty is change.  Since the evolution of the steam engine, electricity, transportation, the integrated circuit, creation of mobile computers and the internet, certain categories of the U.S. and global population have been advantaged – and some have been disadvantaged.  And quite often those disadvantaged at first, become the advantaged over time.

Footnotes – April 2024

April’s “First Friday” meeting focused on the market’s expectations that earnings for 2024-2028 will match the 10%+ growth rate delivered by the S&P 500 during the last 5 years.  However, there is a problem with these expectations.  The variables responsible for the last 10+ years of torrid growth are unlikely to be repeated.  If those variables which created the tailwinds don’t reappear, earnings are unlikely to grow at 10%+ over the next 5 years, as the market is expecting.  With current pricing at historically high levels, the U.S. economy slowing, tailwinds gone, and expectations high, the probability that earnings fail to meet expectations is higher than the market believes. 

Footnotes – March 2024

Today we are going to discuss the 3 themes we believe have a better than 50% chance of influencing our capital markets during 2024. 

You might ask – why this is important? 

In a market environment with abundant uncertainty, it is important to be prepared for any number of shifting environments.   And with current U.S. and global debt levels, at some point, the shifting environments will be more disruptive and surprising.

Footnotes – January 2024

In January’s “Footnotes” publication, we want to focus on the Signals – ignore the noise – and encourage each Family Office member to make intelligent decisions based on facts and data offering information about the likely future to come.  As we move forward through 2024, it will become as important to tune out the noise as it will be to focus on the signals.  Why? Because debt leverages outcomes.  Debt makes good outcomes great.  Debt makes bad outcomes disastrous.  As this publication goes to press, the U.S. has a record $34 trillion in debt at the national level, a record amount of debt in corporate America, AND a record amount of debt on the balance sheet of our U.S. citizens.