Staying In Your Seat
Emotional decision-making fueled by fear or greed can cloud our judgment and lead to irrational investment choices. Reacting to short-term market fluctuations or making impulsive trades based on attention-seeking headlines often leads to poor investment performance. By staying in your seat and focusing on your long-term investment strategy, you can mitigate the influence of emotions. […]
Staying the Course and Holding Fast to Your Investment Strategy
From social media feeds to financial news outlets, we’re constantly bombarded with a stream of updates, opinions, and analysis. Access to so much information can be empowering, but can also be overwhelming. How do we know which sources to trust and where should we focus our attention? With inflation making daily headlines, stock market volatility, […]
Rockbridge Institutional – October 2022 Market Review
MARKET COMMENTARY Stocks Except for emerging markets, stocks were up in October. Domestic markets led the way – large cap (S&P 500) up 9%; small cap (Russell 2000) up 11%. International developed markets (EAFE Index) were up 5%, while emerging markets (MSCI Index) were off 3% due to sharply negative results in China. While uncertainty […]
Capital Market Activity (September, 2022)
August saw significant up and downs in stock returns. In the first half of the month a global stock portfolio was up about 3%, then dropped 6% to a loss of almost 3% after Fed Chairman Powell publicly reaffirm its commitment to increasing interest rates until inflation is in check. Domestic large cap equities were […]
Capital Market Activity (August, 2022)
After a sharp decline in the first six months of this year, stocks were up nicely in July; a global equity portfolio was up just over 6%. These results were a welcome respite from what we have experienced thus far this year. Markets look to the future. Let us hope they signal positive expectations for […]
The Fed’s new path and what it means for Investors
The Federal Reserve met in December and outlined a new course for monetary policy going forward. They signaled two big changes: The Fed will stop buying Treasury Bonds and Mortgage-Backed Securities by March The Fed expects to raise interest rates 3 times next year, bringing the Fed Funds rate from a target of 0.00% – […]
State of the Labor Market
Covid-19 didn’t just bring volatility to the stock market, it also brought volatility to the labor market. The number of unemployed quadrupled from 5.7 million (3.5%) in February 2020 to 23.1 million (14.8%) in April 2020. Not surprisingly, the number of job openings decreased from 7.1 million to 4.6 million at that same time. Fortunately, […]
Q&A – Social Security
Ethan Gilbert, CFA®, CFP®, was recently featured in a short Q&A on The Street’s “Ask Bob”. Shown below is what was asked, as well as Ethan’s answer to the question: Question: My husband wanted me to ask you something. He is 65 and will be 66 on October 16th this year. At what age […]
NYS tax update: PTET
If you itemize deductions on your federal tax return, you’ll recall that the 2017 tax law changes imposed a $10,000 cap on the amount of state income and property taxes (SALT) that you could deduct on your federal return. For many New York State taxpayers, this greatly reduced their federal itemized deductions and potentially forced them to […]
2020 active vs. passive
Each year the financial services company, Morningstar, issues a report of how actively managed funds performed relative to passive funds. Historically, actively managed funds have not performed as well as funds designed to simply replicate a market or published index. However, one argument active fund managers make is that they are “nimbler” during times of […]
