Market Anxiety and Fifth Set Investment Principles
We have recently been receiving many questions and concerns from clients regarding the current political environment and what it means for their portfolios and the economy overall. I’m typically hesitant to write about subjects like this since markets are by nature volatile, and in my opinion, responding to volatile markets can have the effect of […]
What Overbooked Flights Can Tell Us About Investing
My family and I recently traveled to Columbus, Ohio with my father-law and sister-in-law to help celebrate his seventy-sixth birthday by attending a football game at his alma matter, The Ohio State University. We had a great time at the game, seeing the school and getting into the school spirit while we were there. On […]
There’s No Skill in Stock Picking
A recent WSJ article, “Taking a Random Path to Stock Riches”, touched on a number of key Fifth Set PWM investment principles around stock picking. The article draws its content from a competition that paired stocks picks produced by a series of random dart throws against those generated by a group of fund managers who […]
Yield Curves Offer Information About Future Bond Returns
One of the differences between investing in investment grade bonds and stocks, is that the market provides more information about what to expect from future bond returns then stocks returns. With stocks, while we know the current dividend yield (the stock dividend divided by the stock price) and this is a significant component of future […]
The Debt Limit Crisis and The Importance of Staying in Your Seat
With the potential debt limit debacle behind us now (for two years anyway), this is a good time for investors to take a step back and see how they reacted to the possibility of a market meltdown.
Highlights from the Recently Passed SECURE Act 2.0
Included as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023, the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 was signed into law on December 29, 2022. A follow up to the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act of 2019, SECURE 2.0 includes numerous updates, tweaks, and changes to retirement savings legislation. The full text of […]
This is What it Means to be an Investor
As investors, we are experiencing a truly painful period. Inflation, Covid, Ukraine, interest rates and now plummeting stock markets. Since peaking on January 3, 2022, the S&P 500 is down 23%. Some parts of the market are down considerably more, particularly large growth stocks. As measured by the iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF (IWF), they […]
Words of Market Wisdom from the Father of Efficient Markets
Much of Fifth Set’s investment philosophy is drawn from the academic research findings of University of Chicago Professor Eugene Fama. A 2013 Nobel laureate in Economics, Professor Fama was recently interviewed for a New York Times article “Talking War and Market Volatility With a Giant of Economics”. With increased market volatility reflecting the continuing impacts […]
FAANG: Revisited – Recent Performance Shows Nothing Lasts Forever
On April 20, 2022, Netflix stock fell 37% following a disappointing earnings report the previous day. As a member of the FAANG group of large technology stocks (Meta “Facebook”, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Alphabet “Google”), it seemed like a good time to revisit a post we wrote back on October 30, 2020. In that post, […]
The High Cost of Being Right – Strategic Allocations to Commodities and Gold Have Been Costly
Commodity[1] and gold funds have been the big winners so far this year, with year-to-date gains of 24.6% and 5.8% respectively. Driven by inflation rates not seen in forty years and the war in Ukraine, these classic inflation “hedges” have provided investors with low correlated, positive returns during a period that’s been bad for both […]