I was recently listening to a podcast hosted by a few advisors who are also popular in financial media. One of them had recently been brought on by several media outlets to talk about one of their predictions for 2023.

As a way of establishing credibility, the media outlets cited one of his 2022 predictions that he got right – the S&P will have its worst year since 2008. Financial news outlets had subject lines that read something to extent of “this analyst who forecasted market downturn in 2022, now says...”

Last month Warren Buffett published his annual letter, which as usual had timeless pieces of wisdom in it. Below are a few of my favorites.  

#1 - Focus on dividends and earnings during market downturns. In 1994 they bought $1.4M of Coca-Cola. Last year that stock paid them dividends of over $700M…

Raising a 5-year-old has taught me a lot about setting expectations. A few nights ago, I gave him a 5-minute warning before bedtime. When I told him it was time, he jokingly stood up straight, saluted me, said “yes sir” and marched upstairs to brush his teeth. I’ve learned this “warning” technique after many failed attempts that involved me interrupting him in the middle of a game to send him to bed with no warning. When I do this, he is completely caught off guard and his reaction shows. The time he goes to bed is the same in either scenario. The only difference is whether his expectations were met.

Let me try to convince you that the same is true in the short-run for the stock market.  

Because of the variability of stock market returns in the short run, I steer clients away from short-term tactical changes to their portfolio and prefer to rely on the weighty evidence of history, along with long-term thematic trends in the market.

While no one has consistently and accurately predicted what the stock market is about to do, several well-respected firms provide long-term outlooks that have proven to be more accurate than short-term predictions.  

Below are the 2023 10-year estimates…

With interest rates rising for savings and CDs, I’ve had a few questions on whether or not CDs should take the place of bonds in a portfolio. After all, you can earn nearly the same interest rate on a 1-year CD (4.15%) as a 2-year Treasury (4.18%) as of January 19th…

As inflation soared in 2021, so did the rate you could earn risk-free on government I-bonds. I originally wrote about the benefits of these in January of last year. Later in the year, the starting interest rate peaked at nearly 10%. There was so much consumer interest in buying them, that the treasury website crashed the day before interest rates reset lower.

With inflation starting to come down, I have gotten a few questions about whether these bonds are still attractive…