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After several years of low interest rates, bond yields have been attractive for the past few years. While a recent turning point in central bank policy has slightly lowered yields, today’s bond market offers a unique combination of capital preservation and income in an increasingly complex economic landscape. Our current fixed income investment strategy is […]
As of early-August, US stocks, as measured by the S&P 500, are up about 12% in 2024. A first-half rally wasn’t supposed to happen for a number of reasons. Entering the year, the market traded at over 19x forward earnings – not particularly cheap. The Fed Funds rate had exceeded 5% since Summer 2023, putting […]
Download Article: The Head and the Heart In life, few things put us at the mercy of our emotions the way investing can. The last three years in the markets have been especially unnerving, exhibiting the plot elements of a Shakespeare play. We witnessed drama as the world locked down during Covid, a supernatural-like intervention b […]
As a key tenet of our mission at Clifford Swan is to preserve and grow our clients’ wealth, inflation protection is always on our minds. Recently, however, the topic has made national headlines, with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the year ended March 2022 rising 8.5% versus the previous year—the highest jump since 1981. […]
It’s no secret that ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) investing is more than a passing fad. ESG investors select companies with a focus on how the business impacts the environment, manages relationships with employees, customers, partners, and communities, and maintains fair and transparent corporate governance. These criteria matter to the investing public, which over the past […]
Over the last decade, many events have occurred that have affected the economy, the stock market, and the level of interest rates. Let’s take a look at this period—at the market circumstances entering the decade, what has actually happened, and what we might have learned from it.Entering 2010, the market (as measured by the S&P […]
In 1965, a company in the S&P 500 Index had an average life of 33 years. Incredibly, that number is now down to 18 years and falling.What’s driving the change? Technology has a lot to do with it as entire industries have been reshaped, from the way we shop for clothes to how we power […]
I began my investment counseling career in 1979. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) ranged between a low of 797 and a high of 897 that year (the DJIA is currently trading around the 24,000 to 25,000 level). I recall the euphoria investors felt when the index crossed 1,000 in November 1980, for the first […]
“In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run it is a weighing machine.” —Benjamin GrahamAfter an eventful first quarter of 2018, in which the S&P 500 Index first surged over 5% in January and subsequently briefly tumbled as the calendar progressed from January to February, the stock market quickly recovered and returns have been relatively […]
Behavioral finance is the study of traditional finance theories coupled with the study of psychology. Three Nobel Prizes in economics have been awarded to professors for their advances in behavioral finance. One of the recipients, Professor Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University, wrote a New York Times bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, and was the subject of another, The Undoing Project, written by Michael Lewis. Reflecting the increased importance ascribed to the field, […]
One of the most widely accepted principles of investing is that the intrinsic, or fundamental, value of an investment equals the present value of all future after-tax earnings to the owners of that investment. Simple math shows that a lower tax rate leads to higher after-tax earnings, in turn creating a higher intrinsic business value. Said more eloquently by Warren Buffett when commenting on the Tax […]
Download Article: Believe So That You May Understand Stock market investors have experienced quite a volatile ride over the last two decades. As measured by the S&P 500 Index, the stock market tripled from 1995 to 2000. The ensuing bear market from 2000 to 2003 saw a decline of about 50%. The market recovered completely from 2003 to 2007 and then fell again almost 60% […]
Download Article: Words from the Wise and Today’s Stock Market There are great quotations about many areas of human affairs, and the field of investing is no exception. Let’s take a look at a few of them and see how they might apply to today’s investing environment.“Markets do not go up and down on good or bad, they go up and down on better […]
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