The Big Picture
MARCH 3, 2025
Since March Madness is nearly upon us, how about a fun basketball story? I was lucky enough to be a hoops fan during the golden age of basketball: Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, the Bad Boy Detroit Pistons, Michael Jordan, and the perennially-on-the-verge-of-winning-it-all New York Knicks during the Patrick Ewing, John Starks, Charles Oakley, Anthony Mason era.
Calculated Risk
MARCH 4, 2025
Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: Fannie and Freddie: Single Family Serious Delinquency Rates Increased in January Excerpt: Freddie Mac reported that the Single-Family serious delinquency rate in January was 0.61%, up from 0.59% December. Freddie's rate is up year-over-year from 0.55% in January 2024, however, this is close to the pre-pandemic level of 0.60%.
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Nerd's Eye View
MARCH 10, 2025
Financial advicers often market their comprehensive financial services as a way to differentiate themselves from other advisory firms and to stand out in the broader landscape of financial advice. These services may range from 'standard' offerings like retirement planning to less traditional areas like credit card consulting. In a firm's early years, there tends to be more room for experimentation, with advisors adding new services to provide value and attract clients.
Abnormal Returns
MARCH 17, 2025
Markets Corrections happen more often than you remember. (optimisticallie.com) Market moves just happen faster these days. (awealthofcommonsense.com) Books "Buffett and Munger Unscripted: Three Decades of Investment and Business Insights from the Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Meetings" by Alex Morris is a good refresher course. (newsletter.rationalwalk.com) A review of "The Art of Uncertainty: How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck" by Davie Spiegelhalter.
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Wealth Management
MARCH 13, 2025
The broker/dealer is embarking on a multi-year effort to restructure its home office to boost collaboration and client focus, with layoffs to come on the administrative side of the business.
A Wealth of Common Sense
MARCH 14, 2025
Here’s something I shared on Twitter recently: Some people thought I was being hyperbolic. Maybe so. That’s the point of social media sometimes. Then I read the latest Eye on the Market fromMichael Cembalest who said what I said only much more eloquently: Here’s the interesting thing about the stock market: it cannot be indicted, arrested or deported; it cannot be intimidated, threatened or bullied; i.
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Calculated Risk
MARCH 17, 2025
On a monthly basis, retail sales increased 0.2% from January to February (seasonally adjusted), and sales were up 3.1 percent from February 2024. From the Census Bureau report : Advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for February 2025, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $722.7 billion, up 0.2 percent from the previous month , and up 3.1 percent from February 2024.
Nerd's Eye View
MARCH 5, 2025
Historically, estate planning centered on tangible documentation – wills, account access, and critical information stored in safes or files, with clear instructions for heirs. However, as assets and personal information have become increasingly digitized and moved online, ensuring smooth access to digital accounts has become increasingly complicated.
Abnormal Returns
MARCH 16, 2025
Top clicks this week Are we finally seeing an opening for international diversification? (awealthofcommonsense.com) The last ten years in the stock market visualized. (sherwood.news) It's been a awhile since the Nasdaq traded below its 200 day moving average. (bilello.blog) The stock market is a big distraction to the business of investing. (albertbridgecapital.com) Another example, why the stock market is not a level playing field.
Wealth Management
MARCH 17, 2025
Shana Sissel shares her insights into the groundbreaking private equity deals in NFL teams and what it all means for the private equity space and investors.
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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?
A Wealth of Common Sense
MARCH 2, 2025
Coming out of the election over the course of anywhere from a few weeks to a few months: Tesla was up nearly 100% Bitcoin rose 60% Microstrategy increased 112% Palantir blasted 200% higher Hims & Hers rocketed up 230% The gains were immense as animal spirits took over and investors got overly excited. The other side of greed is fear. The other side of exuberance is despair.
The Big Picture
MARCH 2, 2025
Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures: Inside the Collapse at the NIH : Administration officials pressured the NIH to avoid clear advice from the agencys own lawyers to restart grant funding now. ( The Atlantic ) Why Gen Z Will Never Leave Home : Thanks to soaring housing costs, a generation of twentysomethings are still in their childhood bedrooms.
Calculated Risk
MARCH 12, 2025
From the MBA: Mortgage Applications Increase in Latest MBA Weekly Survey Mortgage applications increased 11.2 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Associations (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending March 7, 2025. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, increased 11.2 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier.
Nerd's Eye View
MARCH 14, 2025
Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the news that Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner Hester Peirce suggested in a recent interview that she would like to see the SEC give advisors more leeway to provide customized solutions to clients (rather than feeling required to take a regulator-prescribed "check-the-box" approach) and would like to ease the compliance burden on smaller investment advisers (p
Speaker: Sierre Lindgren
Fraud is a battle that every organization must face – it’s no longer a question of “if” but “when.” Every organization is a potential target for fraud, and the finance department is often the bullseye. From cleverly disguised emails to fraudulent payment requests, the tactics of cybercriminals are advancing rapidly. Drawing insights from real-world cases and industry expertise, we’ll explore the vulnerabilities in your processes and how to fortify them effectively.
Abnormal Returns
MARCH 14, 2025
Listening Is AI the future of dubbing? (fastcompany.com) Bill Simmons has re-upped with Spotify ($SPOT). (hollywoodreporter.com) Spotify ($SPOT) will start publishing independent audiobooks. (techcrunch.com) Pocket Casts is making its podcast player free. (arstechnica.com) Economy Derek Thompson talks Gen Z with Kyla Scanlon, author of "In This Economy?
Wealth Management
MARCH 11, 2025
Panelists at the P&I DC East Conference provide a glimpse into the future of DC plans.
Investment Writing
MARCH 4, 2025
What kind of quotation marks do you use in your writing? Did you know that there are two kinds of quotation marksstraight and curly? Straight quotation marks dont curve, whereas curly quotes seem to wriggle on the page (see image below). The actual appearance of the marks will vary depending on the font you use. Straight quotes are a hangover from the days of typewriters when you would have needed separate keys to show the curly quotation marks that appear on the left versus those that appear on
The Big Picture
MARCH 18, 2025
It is March 18th! Publication day is finally here! The challenge in writing How NOT to Invest was organizing a large number of ideas, many of which were only loosely connected, into something coherent, understandable, and, most importantly, readable. It took a while of playing around with the concepts, but eventually, I hit on a structure that I found enormously useful: I organized our biggest impediments to investing success into three broad categories: Bad Ideas , Bad Numbers , and Bad Be
Speaker: Aaron Berson
Managing spend is more than a cost cutting exercise – it's a pathway to smarter decisions that unlock efficiency and drive growth. By understanding and refining the spending process, financial leaders can empower their organizations to achieve more with less. Explore the art of balancing financial control with operational growth. From uncovering hidden inefficiencies to designing workflows that scale your business, we’ll share strategies to align your organization’s spending with its strategic g
Calculated Risk
MARCH 10, 2025
Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: Part 1: Current State of the Housing Market; Overview for mid-March 2025 A brief excerpt: This 2-part overview for mid-March provides a snapshot of the current housing market. Inventory, inventory, inventory! Inventory usually tells the tale. Currently Im watching months-of-supply closely. Since both inventory and sales have fallen significantly, a key for house prices is to watch months-of-supply.
Nerd's Eye View
MARCH 17, 2025
With each passing decade, not only does technology evolve at an ever more dramatic pace, but each new wave comes faster than the last. From the advent of the computer chip in the 1950s to the rise of the personal computer nearly 25 years later in the early 1980s, to the emergence of the internet just 15 years thereafter in the late 1990s, to mobile smartphones only 10 years after that in the late 2000s, to 'robos' less than a decade later in the 2010s, and most recently to AI, which 'suddenly' w
Abnormal Returns
MARCH 2, 2025
Top clicks this week 15 stocks that destroyed the most value in the past decade. (morningstar.com) The Wall of Worry is getting re-built. (downtownjoshbrown.com) The chances of you successfully timing the market based on macro stuff is slim. (awealthofcommonsense.com) Dave Nadig, "You are on your own. There are few left to trust." (davenadig.substack.com) Unfortunately, there is no going back.
Wealth Management
MARCH 10, 2025
Matt Sonnen explains Ellevest's decision to sell its robo advisor to Betterment and focus on its more profitable clients.
Speaker: Duke Heninger, Partner and Fractional CFO at Ampleo & Creator of CFO System
Are you ready to elevate your accounting processes for 2025? 🚀 Join us for an exclusive webinar led by Duke Heninger, a seasoned fractional CFO and CPA passionate about transforming back-office operations for finance teams. This session will cover critical best practices and process improvements tailored specifically for accounting professionals.
A Wealth of Common Sense
MARCH 13, 2025
Kevin Young joined me on the show to answer a question for a young financial advisor who is dealing with his first correction with nervous clients. We also touched on questions about when to sell Palantir, when to sell a rental house and how to deal with a regional recession in Washington DC. Further Reading: Mega Cap World Domination 1Exxon is back in the top 15 now so they might make a return visit.
The Big Picture
MARCH 14, 2025
This week, I speak with Stephanie Kelton , Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Stony Brook University and Senior Fellow at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. We discuss US fiscal policy, recession risks, and her New York Times bestseller “ The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the Peoples Economy.” She has made virtually all the ‘top 50 lists’ including POLITICO’s 50 Most Influential Thinkers in 2016 and Bloomberg Businessw
Calculated Risk
MARCH 12, 2025
Here are a few measures of inflation: The first graph is the one Fed Chair Powell had mentioned two years ago when services less rent of shelter was up around 8% year-over-year. This declined, but is still elevated, and is now up 3.8% YoY. Click on graph for larger image. This graph shows the YoY price change for Services and Services less rent of shelter through February 2025.
Nerd's Eye View
MARCH 12, 2025
Following the long run-up in the US equity markets since the bottom of the 2008–2009 financial crisis, many investors with taxable investment accounts have likely found themselves with high embedded gains in their portfolios. While the gains signal portfolio growth, they also create challenges for ongoing management. Because when it comes time to rebalance the portfolio to its asset allocation targets – or to reallocate the portfolio to a new strategy – any trades made to imple
Speaker: Abdi Ali, Sr. Lease Accounting Consultant
Join this insightful webinar with industry expert Abdi Ali, who will discuss the challenges that can arise from managing lease accounting with spreadsheets! He will share real-world examples of errors, compliance issues, and risks that may be present within your spreadsheets. Learn how these tools, while useful, can sometimes lead to inefficiencies that affect your time, resources, and peace of mind.
Abnormal Returns
MARCH 14, 2025
Markets In the face of uncertainty, the stock market shoots first, asks questions later. (downtownjoshbrown.com) Just how much are the threat of tariffs driving the stock market? (morningstar.com) A 10% correction is a blip. (disciplinefunds.com) Strategy If you are going commit the sin of market timing, sin only a little. (monevator.com) How bad investment decisions feed on themselves.
Wealth Management
MARCH 17, 2025
Aneri Jambusaria considered the other side of the advisor shortage coin, RIAs discussed growth partly due to that demand, and M&A consultants noted the importance of differentiation to keep growing at Future Proof Citywide in Miami.
Alpha Architect
MARCH 10, 2025
Bond ETFs have attracted new investors who previously never owned bonds or bond funds. Bond ETFs have made it easier for more people and institutions to start investing in bonds. How Bond ETFs Make Trading Easier and Cheaper was originally published at Alpha Architect. Please read the Alpha Architect disclosures at your convenience.
The Big Picture
MARCH 7, 2025
This week, I speak with Philipp Carlsson , Global Chief Economist for Boston Consulting Group. Prior to this role at BCG, Philipp advised financial institutions and governments at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as well as McKinsey & Company. He was also Chief Economist at Stanford C. Bernstein. He is a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review and World Economic Forum.
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It's the time of year to give our close process some TLC. Join us in this one hour webinar where we discuss how to adopt leading practices and infuse technology into the month-end close process to improve our experience and increase our productivity during month-end and quarter-end close. Learning Objectives: This course's objective is to understand how the month-end close can be improved with automation and adoption of leading practices.
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