Calculated Risk
JANUARY 3, 2023
Here is another monthly update on framing lumber prices. This graph shows CME random length framing futures through January 3rd. Lumber was at $374 per 1000 board feet this morning. This is down from the peak of $1,733, and down 67% from $1,148 a year ago. Prices are slightly below the pre-pandemic levels of around $400. Click on graph for larger image.
The Big Picture
JANUARY 3, 2023
Welcome to 2023! Let’s jump into the new year with some fresh observations, some of which are quite surprising: • Astronomical Measures of Time Are Unrelated to Investing : 2023 – a new year! It is natural to hope the flipping of the calendar brings something new and different. But why? It takes the Earth 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes, and 9.76 seconds to complete one orbit – to return to its exact same place in space relative to our star, the sun.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Wealth Management
JANUARY 3, 2023
New law includes significant changes to the rules for individual retirement accounts and employer plans.
The Reformed Broker
JANUARY 3, 2023
If you’re a financial advisor or a fund manager and you weren’t down 20% last year, you won, basically. The S&P fell into a 20% bear market while the Nasdaq crashed almost 40%. Bonds were down double digits as an asset class. International stocks, while outperforming the US and not down as much, were still down a lot. Except for Turkey, which inexplicably doubled last year – here’s the TUR ETF, The post Think you have it bad?
Advertisement
Where are top advisors focusing in 2025? AcquireUp’s 2025 Industry Index reveals it all. Based on insights from 200+ financial professionals nationwide, discover why 74% say seminars and referrals deliver the best ROI, how automation is helping advisors scale faster, and why only 8% are tapping into niche marketing (a major growth opportunity!). Whether you're refining your client acquisition strategy or scaling your practice, this report gives you the real-world data, benchmarks, and action ste
Wealth Management
JANUARY 3, 2023
Here’s a sample letter encouraging clients to formulate commitments for 2023.
Abnormal Returns
JANUARY 3, 2023
Research How do bonds perform after a 2-10 yield curve inversion? (simplify.us) What accounts for the difference between brown and green stocks? (alphaarchitect.com) A look at how various factors performed during different market cycles. (quantpedia.com) How is geopolitical risk measured? (alphaarchitect.com) Contrary to the life-cycle hypothesis, the elderly don't uniformly engage in decumulation of assets.
Financial Advisor Source brings together the best content for financial advisor professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Calculated Risk
JANUARY 3, 2023
From the Census Bureau reported that overall construction spending increased: Construction spending during November 2022 was estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1,807.5 billion, 0.2 percent above the revised October estimate of $1,803.2 billion. The November figure is 8.5 percent above the November 2021 estimate of $1,665.2 billion. emphasis added Private spending increased and public spending decreased: Spending on private construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of
Wealth Management
JANUARY 3, 2023
Eight commercial real estate pros offer insights on what they expect to unfold in 2023 amid a challenging macroeconomic environment.
Abnormal Returns
JANUARY 3, 2023
Markets How major asset classes performed in December 2022. (capitalspectator.com) 2022 was the third worst year for the 60/40 portfolio. (awealthofcommonsense.com) The Dow lead the major indices in 2022. (albertbridgecapital.com) Strategy Don't let the turn of the calendar overly influence your thinking. (ritholtz.com) It's been a long time since international stocks outperformed the U.S.
Wealth Management
JANUARY 3, 2023
Investors are feeling more cautious and stress-testing their holdings for different scenarios, industry insiders say.
Speaker: Claire Grosjean, Global Finance & Operations Executive
Finance teams are drowning in data—but is it actually helping them spend smarter? Without the right approach, excess spending, inefficiencies, and missed opportunities continue to drain profitability. While analytics offers powerful insights, financial intelligence requires more than just numbers—it takes the right blend of automation, strategy, and human expertise.
Calculated Risk
JANUARY 3, 2023
From Matthew Graham at Mortgage News Daily: Mortgage Rates Drop Modestly to Start The New Year For now, the average lender is moving back down below the 6.5% threshold for top tier 30yr fixed rates, but just barely. That number was getting close to 6.0% in early December and was more than half a point higher as of last week. [ 30 year fixed 6.45% ] emphasis added Wednesday: • At 7:00 AM ET, The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) will release the results for the mortgage purchase applications ind
Wealth Management
JANUARY 3, 2023
New law includes significant changes to the rules for individual retirement accounts and employer plans.
The Reformed Broker
JANUARY 3, 2023
Join Downtown Josh Brown and Michael Batnick for another round of What Are Your Thoughts? On this week’s episode, Josh and Michael discuss the biggest topics in investing and finance, including: ►2023 Targets – Wall Street is going into the year the majority of strategists predicting muted gains or outright losses for the S&P 500. ►Dotcom Bubble Stocks – “Where are they now?
Wealth Management
JANUARY 3, 2023
Nuveen Real Estate is looking to expand its online investor base through an arrangement with CrowdStreet, reports GlobeSt.com. Colliers reports an increase in industrial sublease space. These are among today’s must reads from around the commercial real estate industry.
Speaker: David Worrell, CFO, Author & Speaker
Your financial statements hold powerful insights—but are you truly paying attention? Many finance professionals focus on the income statement while overlooking key signals hidden in the balance sheet and cash flow statement. Understanding these numbers can unlock smarter decision-making, uncover risks, and drive long-term success. Join David Worrell, accomplished CFO, finance expert, and author, for an engaging, nontraditional take on reading financial statements.
The Reformed Broker
JANUARY 3, 2023
Final Trades: Johnson & Johnson, Goldman Sachs, Chubb from CNBC. The post Clips From Today’s Halftime Report appeared first on The Reformed Broker.
Wealth Management
JANUARY 3, 2023
BREIT, which was designed for wealthy individual investors, has struggled in recent months and been forced to limit withdrawals.
Calculated Risk
JANUARY 3, 2023
Notes: This CoreLogic House Price Index report is for November. The recent Case-Shiller index release was for October. The CoreLogic HPI is a three-month weighted average and is not seasonally adjusted (NSA). From CoreLogic: Annual Home Price Growth Slows to Two-Year Low in November, CoreLogic Reports CoreLogic®. today released the CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI™) and HPI Forecast™ for November 2022.
Wealth Management
JANUARY 3, 2023
Nuveen Real Estate is looking to expand its online investor base through an arrangement with CrowdStreet, reports GlobeSt.com. Colliers reports an increase in industrial sublease space. These are among today’s must reads from around the commercial real estate industry.
Speaker: Erroll Amacker
Automation is transforming finance but without strong financial oversight it can introduce more risk than reward. From missed discrepancies to strained vendor relationships, accounts payable automation needs a human touch to deliver lasting value. This session is your playbook to get automation right. We’ll explore how to balance speed with control, boost decision-making through human-machine collaboration, and unlock ROI with fewer errors, stronger fraud prevention, and smoother operations.
Calculated Risk
JANUARY 3, 2023
Today, in the Real Estate Newsletter: Question #8 for 2023: How much will Residential investment change in 2023? How about housing starts and new home sales in 2023? A brief excerpt: Earlier I posted some questions on my blog for next year: Ten Economic Questions for 2023. Some of these questions concern real estate (inventory, house prices, housing starts, new home sales), and I’ll post thoughts on those in the newsletter (others like GDP and employment will be on my blog).
Wealth Management
JANUARY 3, 2023
Market participants are modestly bullish on stocks and bonds this year, the latest survey shows.
Nerd's Eye View
JANUARY 3, 2023
Welcome back to the 314th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast ! My guest on today's podcast is Sue Chesney. Sue is the owner of Delegated Planning, which offers virtual outsourced financial planning support to 55 advisory firms, and the co-founder of Planning Zoo, an outsourced financial planning data entry business that helps current and recently graduated students from college CFP educational programs connect with advisory firms that need paraplanner support for data entry into fi
Wealth Management
JANUARY 3, 2023
Investors pulled nearly $3.6 billion from over 20 Pimco and Allianz-branded funds, the biggest cumulative outflow ever for the asset manager.
Advertisement
Based off SkyStem's popular e-Book, the book of secrets to the month-end close will be revealed in this one-hour webinar. Learn leading practices when it comes to building a strong and sustainable month-end close that has room to grow and evolve. Learn about the power of precise estimates, why reconciliations are critical to closing the books, how and when to automate, and how the chart of accounts play into your close process.
Advisor Perspectives
JANUARY 3, 2023
As we talk with and counsel our clients, they need to have the right emotional attitude about money and investing. And most of those attitudes center on concepts that are central to both investing and life in general.
Wealth Management
JANUARY 3, 2023
The US lifetime estate-and-gift tax exemption is up to almost $26 million for married couples after the highest inflation in decades adjusted the threshold.
Advisor Perspectives
JANUARY 3, 2023
This past year was disappointing for stock and bond investors. The real 25% loss in stocks was in the bottom decile and the real 20.3 bond loss is the worst in the past 97 years. Greater losses lie ahead.
Wealth Management
JANUARY 3, 2023
Taxing income only up to $160,200 for Social Security is leaving a lot of revenue on the table.
Advertisement
Like being inches from the end zone, many advisors are frustratingly close to their next level of success. You work hard. You put in the hours. But if your closing rate is stuck or your pipeline feels like a revolving door… something has to change. Most advisors are just one small shift away from dramatically increasing their revenue. The difference?
Investment Writing
JANUARY 3, 2023
Automated tools can improve your financial writing. Proofreading. Some of my favorite tools are Speak, PerfectIt, and Grammarly, as I’ve discussed in “ My three main software tools for proofreading.” They help me with proofreading. I’ve gone into more detail on one of these tools in “ How I use Grammarly to improve my writing.”. If your organization uses Associated Press style, you may like AP StyleGuard, which I discuss in “ AP StyleGuard: the answer to your proofreading prayers?
Wealth Management
JANUARY 3, 2023
Large, long and unproductive meetings have become a scourge of today’s hybrid workplace, prompting companies to try and curtail them.
Alpha Architect
JANUARY 3, 2023
No exposure to domestic equities. No exposure to international equities. No exposure to REITs. Partial exposure to commodities. No exposure to intermediate-term bonds. DIY Trend-Following Allocations: January 2023 was originally published at Alpha Architect. Please read the Alpha Architect disclosures at your convenience.
Advisor Perspectives
JANUARY 3, 2023
Relative to the accumulation phase, strategies that mitigate the unique risks faced by retirees in decumulation are less understood and researched. By identifying and illustrating those risks, planners can better prepare clients for retirement.
Advertisement
Is your finance team bogged down by endless data requests and disorganized spreadsheets during the month-end close? It’s time to consider a better option – automate with ART! SkyStem’s solution works alongside your ERP to transform the close and account reconciliation process and speed up month-end work. Explore SkyStem’s ART - the award-winning account reconciliation automation platform - and receive a $100 Amazon gift card as a thank you for your time.
Expert insights. Personalized for you.
363 
Let's personalize your content