Capital Ideas
Second Quarter 2018 Letter to Clients
Market pundits have spent a great deal of time the past three decades endlessly debating the merits of “active” vs. “passive” investing. At its core, the argument can be distilled down to this: Is it better for investors to employ elaborate strategies to try and...
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First Quarter 2018 Letter to Clients
January saw the stock market continue its rapid surge upward, but the party did not last long on Wall Street. Volatility returned to the market in a significant way by the end of the month, and stocks have whipsawed up and down ever since. Not surprisingly, the media...
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Insights on the keys to enjoying a “healthy wealth”.
What's Your Business Really Worth? Part 1 Dennis Covington | Principal Key Takeaways: • Private businesses can have multiple values depending on who the potential buyers are—and what each the buyer’s needs are. • Business owners need to realize that taxes and expenses...
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Death of the Fiduciary Rule
It’s officially official: the Fiduciary Rule is dead. I first wrote about the Fiduciary Rule in this forum in March 2015, asking the question “Whose Interests Come First?” Subsequent posts chronicled the saga of the rule until it finally became law on April 10, 2017....
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Fourth Quarter 2017 Letter to Clients
Fourth Quarter 2017 Letter to Clients As 2018 began, the major U.S. stock market indexes surged to yet another round of record highs. The first week of January saw the Nasdaq index top 7,000, the S&P 500 index clear the 2,700 mark, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average...
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Whats Your Business Really Worth
What’s Your Business Really Worth? Part 2 Key Takeaways: There are at least 7 different ways to value a private business: Here we will explore Liquidation Value, Market Value, Fair Market Value and Owner’s Value. Market value is a technique for showing how your...
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Third Quarter 2017 Letter to Clients
Third Quarter 2017 Letter to Clients “Is the stock market in another bubble?” Of all the questions we field from clients, prospects, friends and family – the question of whether we are in a bubble leads the way by far. There are two reasons why this question comes up...
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Second Quarter 2017 Letter to Clients
Second Quarter 2017 Letter to Clients As the major stock indexes have, one-by-one, broken through their previous record highs in recent months, it has been interesting to observe that the dominant reaction among many investors has not been one of celebration but,...
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First Quarter 2017 Letter to Clients
First Quarter 2017 Letter to Clients “The buying opportunity of a lifetime.” That was how the esteemed financial writer Nick Murray described the stock market environment in early 2009. Hindsight shows he was, of course, spot on. But it certainly didn’t feel that way...
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Presidential Elections and the Stock Market
Presidential Elections and the Stock Market Next month, Americans will head to the polls to elect the next president of the United States. While the outcome is unknown, one thing is for certain: There will be a steady stream of opinions from pundits and...
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Searching for the Holy Grail of Investing
CAPE Fear: Can we use Valuation Ratios to Time the Market? With popular market benchmarks like the S&P 500 setting record highs in 2014, many investors have become apprehensive. They’re afraid that a major market decline is imminent and are eager to find a strategy...
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