Tariff-Related Trauma and Your Portfolio
April 16, 2025  | By Kevin Smith, CFA

When the headlines scream tariffs, investors flinch—and markets tend to lurch. That’s exactly what happened recently as new tariff announcements triggered a sharp decline in the U.S. stock market. But what’s really going on? Let’s unpack it. Who Actually Pays…Read More

An Alternative Stock Market Story
April 4, 2025  | By Kevin Smith, CFA

Imagine you’re baking a cake, but instead of carefully measuring the ingredients, you you overdo it on sugar to appeal to your inner child. The cake might taste okay at first, but it’s not balanced—and eventually, it could collapse or…Read More

Matt on Markets: Palpable Concerns
March 31, 2025  | By Matt Pierce, CFA

It is generally an exercise in futility to ascribe a single issue to a decline in market prices, particularly on a day-to-day basis. The raft of policy measures being proposed and the speed with which they’re being implemented by the…Read More

Market Forecasts, Mega Stocks, and the Year Ahead
January 25, 2025  | By Kevin Smith, CFA

The image below reflects what I imagine the world’s greatest stock market forecaster envisions when she closes her eyes. All of the millions of variables perfectly connected into a beautiful coherent understanding of how it all works: Imagine a formula…Read More

Bitcoin!
December 20, 2024  | By Kevin Smith, CFA

A lot has changed with Bitcoin since our 2021 blog post, so it’s time for an update. Bitcoin has achieved staying power. With a total market value of about $2 trillion, it probably isn’t going away unless its cryptography is broken…Read More

The Post-Election Markets
November 23, 2024  | By Kevin Smith, CFA

The elections are over. Some of you are distraught and some are elated – we know because we have both types of conversations every day. It was stressful for everyone because of the uncertainty, but the sun rises again and…Read More

Dealing With The Dips
September 1, 2024  | By Kevin Smith, CFA

Employees get paid for doing work. Investors get paid for taking risk. Risk is the chance of losing value between the time of purchase and sale. We experience risk when the value of an asset falls while we own it….Read More

Using Dollar-Cost Averaging to Reduce Risk
May 15, 2024  | By Kevin Smith, CFA

Investing a large sum of money can be daunting, especially with the uncertainty of market fluctuations. Enter dollar-cost averaging (DCA), a strategy designed to help investors manage risk by spreading their investments over time. By consistently investing a fixed amount,…Read More

Investing for the Unknowable
September 22, 2021  | By Matt Pierce, CFA

By Matthew Pierce, CFA Yogi was right, and it’s particularly difficult when it’s your hard earned money on the line! Uncertainty never goes away, it just changes shape. It is the water we swim in as investors, so we should…Read More

The Year of the IPO
July 19, 2019  | By Kevin Smith, CFA

Investors revel in the excitement of a beloved tech company ringing the bell on their opening day on the stock market. Months of media attention and speculation about the opening price lead up to this celebrated event. Will this company…Read More