There is no shortage of jargon and industry speak in the financial news. I do my very best to steer clear of it when I write to you, as I fully appreciate how confusing (and sometimes annoying!) it can be. However, one term snuck into my Pam to Paper post last week when I used […]

When I was in high school, I received an academic award and as part of that, I was given a Series EE US Savings Bond. It was a $200 denomination. This was in 1996. A lifetime ago! I don’t have an memory of this, but recently, my mom was cleaning out her house and gave […]

I wouldn’t normally use this column to analyze the daily movements of any individual equity. As you all know, there are many reasons for a stock price to move day in and day out, and as long term investors, we don’t like to get too deep into those daily gyrations. However, when a client asked […]

My mom’s neighbor called me this week to ask about the “bond crisis” as he had read a headline to that effect. I have shared my concerns over the general business media in the past and this is yet another example of why I feel the headlines don’t tell the full story (and perhaps are […]

A client reached out last week in an attempt to understand the mechanics of a recent trade. He had sold a combination of securities (a money market fund and a few ETFs) to free up cash in his after-tax account to pay for a recent purchase. The day after he placed the sale order/trade, he […]

There was a time a few years ago when money market funds were an afterthought. With interest rates near zero, there was little to no need to consider investing in a money market fund (as you earned the same (almost zero) interest rate just staying put in cash). Times have changed and as of present […]

A client recently reached out asking whether or not I thought she should invest in shares of an Initial Public Offering (“IPO”). While these events are talked about in the news and grab the headlines, there are many facets of them that are not widely explained. Let’s take a closer look at IPOs – what […]

For the past two weeks, I’ve addressed client questions related to two popular equity market indexes – the NASDAQ and the Dow Jones Industrial Average. While no none asked me specifically about the seemingly most popular equity index, I couldn’t leave this series of questions without addressing it. So let’s take a closer look at […]

Last week, a client asked about the NASDAQ 100 and its rebalance. This week, I was talking to a client about the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). This long-standing market index just posted its best winning streak since the 1980s, posting 13 straight days of positive closes (it fell short of 14 straight days by […]

The news media has been discussing a relatively rare occurrence this week – a special rebalance of a key market index. A client asked me why it’s happening and what it may mean for markets and individual companies. Let’s take a look What is the NASDAQ 100? The NASDAQ 100 is a common equity market […]