Category: Investment Principles

 Wow! The stock market just set a record for the longest bull market period in history. A bull market is defined as a period during which the market is rising without suffering a decline of 20% or more. Despite some volatility during the past decade, we have not experienced a 20% decline since 2009. In fact, the S&P 500 stock index established an all-time high on Monday, August 27th. In light of these record-setting events, we wanted to address how the recent stock market performance affects our investment philosophy. The short answer is that it does not change how we invest. The attached document summarizes the investment principles we maintain regardless of market performance. Stud ...

Download Full PDf Between 2013-14 and 2014-15, average published tuition and fee prices increased by 2.9% for in-state students in the public four-year sector, by 3.3% for out-of-state students in the public four-year sector and for in-district students at public two-year colleges, and by 3.7% at private nonprofit four-year institutions. These increases are higher than the 2.0% increase in the Consumer Price Index between July 2013 and July 2014, but in all sectors these price increases are lower than the average annual increases in the past five years, the past 10 years, and the past 30 years. Trends in College Pricing 2014 reports on the prices charged by colleges and universities ...

Everyone would prefer the investment markets to make consistent gains without any periods of negative performance.  Unfortunately, that is not the way the investment markets deliver returns. Research into investor psychology has confirmed what we have witnessed while working with clients for over twenty years.   The negative emotions tied to investment losses are significantly stronger than the positive feelings connected to investment gains.  To capitalize on this difference, some financial services firms have migrated to recommending portfolios that will generate far lower returns in the hopes of reducing the number of times the firm has to report negative returns to their clients. ...