Matt Weier, CFA, CFP®

It has been about fifteen months since stock prices last peaked and nearly a year since entering Bear Market territory. After reaching a low in October, down 25%, the S&P 500 has recovered about half of this...

You may have heard about the failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and have some questions about it. I’ll share the short story on the bank without getting too far into the nuances of bank regulation and balance...

Financial markets have a certain way of humbling investors from time to time. The last three years have been a prime example. One could be forgiven for assuming that a once-in-a-hundred-year pandemic that halts a...

It’s been a difficult year for financial markets. All three quarters this year have experienced negative returns for stock prices, higher interest rates and resulting lower bond prices, and more question marks...

Like the seemingly endless summer road trip, the current decline in financial market prices feels like it is lasting forever. It isn’t hard to imagine ourselves in the back seat shouting at the driver, “Are we...

Nothing.

Only three months into the new year and it feels like a year’s worth of events have already happened in the economy and financial markets.

A CEO of a large investment firm once told a story about a dinner conversation with the head of a large investment fund.  

Well, this doesn’t feel good. Many of us came into 2022 thinking, “This is the year!” The pandemic looked to be easing. Supply chain problems were going to get better so we could get our stuff sooner. Sure, we’ve...

Investment markets’ ability to seemingly defy expectations continued in 2021. There were probably 7,296 reasons why stocks shouldn’t have gone up in a straight line. I’m exaggerating slightly, but here’s an...

Fact: The S&P 500 has experienced 54 record highs in 2021.

After the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008 and 2009 much was written about how troubling it was that diversification¹ no longer worked. This conclusion was drawn since all stocks moved in the same downward...