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Greetings and welcome to December. This edition of our monthly communication is a bit longer than normal. We present general announcements, a brief discussion on market volatility and close with a longer discussion about cryptocurrency.

One of the prominent themes of our newsletters this year has been inflation. Inflation rates for countries globally have hit decade, and in some cases, multi-decade highs. Even the Federal Reserve, long champion of the “inflation...

For most of the post-war era, the prevailing academic models that seek to explain capital market prices have been based upon the assumption that the market is completely efficient. The traditional economic...

A primary residence is often a person’s largest single asset. In this part of the country, price appreciation has surprised proud homeowners and real estate professionals alike. A general concern may be emerging that the housing market...

Much like the weather in the Puget Sound during spring, the economic data points released in May were wildly inconsistent. Labor market and inflation data both missed analysts’ forecasts by huge margins, but in opposite directions...

In the recent PIM Quarterly News Release, we proposed that the equity market had overreacted to inflation concerns. We suggested that bond yields would fall and that as a result, value equity outperformance would give way to...

The S&P 500 is up approximately 3% for the year through the last trading day of February. March is coming in with a bang, but we will ignore that for the moment. Even the month of February saw the S&P 500 gain around 1%....

“Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a byproduct...

Irvin Fisher was a prominent US economist who made many significant contributions to his field in the early 1900’s. Nobel-winning economists Milton Friedman and James Tobin have called Mr. Fisher “the greatest economist the...

Election results and vaccine announcements from Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca have made this the best November for the S&P 500 since 1928, with the index (SPY) gaining 10.93% through Monday, November 30th. The Russell 2000 (IWM), the...

Introduction This communication contains two completely unrelated sections: Market Commentary, and Why a Roth Conversion Now? We have chosen to present these in the same document because the section on Roth IRA conversions is quite...

In the monthly communication we released on Tuesday, we discussed that U.S. large cap market returns are concentrated within a handful of technology stocks and suggested that this was cause for concern. The market confirmed this...

Month in Review: August 2020 Global equity markets continued higher this past month on a mix of vaccine optimism and better than expected earnings. The S&P 500 and the MSCI All-Cap World Index (a measure of all equity markets globally)...

Greetings valued clients. We hope this finds you well and enjoying the summer sun to the extent possible. In earlier communications we mentioned our intention to provide commentary monthly through the end of the year. This is the first...

For the past approximately two months, we have produced a communication each Friday. Our hope was to provide clear information and analysis, as well as consistent support and guidance through what has been a most unusual economic and...

Introduction: We have suggested in recent weeks that the market and economic recovery will take time, that there will be volatility along the way. The volatility of an investment is commonly expressed using a measure called...

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Winston Churchill: November 10, 1942 We present this Churchill quote for two reasons. First, we understand...

Jobs, Oil, Markets and Portfolios Jobs: Unemployment claims increased by 4.4 million in the past week, though the trend is sharply down since spiking during the last week of March. Around 26 million jobs have now been lost due to the...

The S&P500 gained another 3 ½ percent this week, with plenty of volatility along the way and a strong finish on Friday. Continued volatility is to be expected and is likely to continue through September. Market behavior is about...

It has been a positive week for equity markets, with the S&P500 advancing approximately 9.4% in the last five trading sessions. Speculation abounds, ranging from expectations of a shorter than expected recession and bear market to what...

Seeking Inspiration: Quite a while ago, we shared with you what is considered to be the actual history of the phrase “May you live in interesting times.” As a reminder, it likely did not originate in China, and it was not...