Another year is coming to a close. So much has happened of late — England voted to “Brexit” the European Union, the Chicago Cubs ended their 108-year World Series draught and Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. With all that’s going on it might be easy to forget about your year-end financial […]
If there was a Hall of Fame for rock ’n’ roll fans, Jane Comitz and her husband, Chet, would be charter members. Jane and Chet enjoy traveling, as a lot of folks do. But they don’t stop there. They travel the world not just to see the sights, but to catch musical acts. ‘We wanted […]
If you make orange juice from frozen concentrate you can mix it too strongly. Add only a little water, and it tastes too sugary, too tangy. Something similar is happening with the S&P 500 Index.* Lately, the index tastes funny. It’s too concentrated. “The S&P 500 has a big performance issue that should be a […]
I’ve written about municipal bonds in the past. Now is a good time to update my thoughts on this asset class. Municipal bonds and muni bond funds have historically been an effective way of generating tax-free income. In high school, you may have learned about the 1819 U.S. Supreme Court case, McCulloch v. Maryland. That […]
My wife Roxane, my son Craig and I visited Washington, DC over Memorial Day weekend. We enjoyed seeing the sites and experiencing the ambiance of the city, though we missed the cherry blossoms by a month. What a pleasure to take in the National Memorial Day Parade — an awesome display of patriotism held annually […]
It was the topic this spring that everyone talked about — except for some lawyers and bankers who generated the talk. The Panama Papers, an April 2016 leak of 11.5 million documents from a Panama-based law firm, revealed the murky world of tax havens and offshore companies and identified by name some very wealthy people […]
What was the proper investment move to make during the past year, when the stock market fell, rose, fell again and rose a second time? With that question in mind, the headline of a recent Wall Street Journal article caught my eye: “How to Stop Killing Your Returns.” The same article was titled “The Big […]
If you’re like me, you’ve probably received abusive phone calls from people purporting to be from the IRS, or a bank or credit card company. Abusive phone scammers call my home frequently. A very common scam, one that is going on a lot right now, is the Angry IRS Caller. They speak with a stern […]
I wrote an article in 2013 entitled, “History’s investment lesson.” The article showed that in most years the stock market experiences at least one 10% drop during the year, but ends the year with an overall positive return. What’s unusual about the bull market since March 2009 is that we have not experienced these big, […]
If you’re a client of mine, you’ve probably noticed the name Securities America associated with my firm. It appears on your monthly and quarterly statements. It’s named in the disclosure below. It’s noted on my website. You probably receive enough mail naming Securities America that you may think they’re your pen pal. Who is Securities […]