The Watchman Group 
Morgan Housel’s The Psychology of Money was released in early September and IT IS EXCELLENT. Housel delivers twenty chapters that can be read independently and share a commonsense approach to the behavioral aspects of money and investing. It is not a technical read. It is very well written and filled with valuable insights on how all of … Read more
We continue to hear commentary that suggests certain parts of the market look and feel a lot like the tech bubble in the late 90’s. Many people point to soaring stock prices, high valuations, large Initial Public Offerings (IPO’s), and of course the fact that so much of it is tied to technology companies. Our … Read more
Election day is finally here folks! Probably like you, we are a little bit tired of reading and talking about it. In the spirit of keeping this short and sweet, not much commentary needed with this chart. Blue or red…the direction is pretty clear. Would you agree? Happy voting!
Optimism: The odds of a favorable outcome are in your favor over time, even when there will be setbacks along the way. One of the things we say internally is that we give our clients the confidence to invest. What we really mean is that we encourage them to invest in equities with their long-term … Read more
The Federal Reserve has two primary jobs: maintaining maximum employment and stable prices. How it achieves this is changing. Last week they made a significant announcement signaling that future monetary policy will be very different than policy of the last 40 years. Ever since the persistent inflation of the 1970’s, the Federal Reserve has taken proactive … Read more
Vanguard recently published a study on performance of a 60% stock /40% bond portfolio in election years vs. non election years. The data goes back 160 years and starts with a Lincoln win in 1860 when he took 180 of only 303 electoral votes to become the nation’s 16th president. Ladies and gentleman, here are … Read more
One of our go-to indicators to track the direction of the economy is the Conference Board’s Index of Leading Economic Indicators (LEI for short). For 60 years, the LEI has been one of the most reliable indicators in projecting future economic activity. What’s noteworthy today is that seven of the ten factors that comprise the … Read more
Encouraging trends are pointing to a healing labor market. Unemployment claims fell below one million per week to 963,000, beating expectations by a wide margin. This is a meaningful improvement from the six million weekly claims from late March and early April. Even in the best of times new unemployment claims run 200,000 to 300,000 per week. Equally … Read more
The U.S. Presidential election is a little more than three months away. The campaign will be vigorously contested by both parties, with emotions running high and possibly greater than normal market volatility, including after the election depending on its outcome. Political candidates typically campaign from extreme positions to inspire their supporters and encourage voter turnout, but most … Read more
Six stocks currently make up almost 22% of the S&P 500 Index: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Alphabet (Google), Netflix and Microsoft. Their dominance has been the source of fantastic debate in the investment community. Check out the following stats: Since the beginning of 2015, these stocks produced a cumulative return of +236%. The other 494 stocks … Read more
