According to The South China Morning Post, the Chinese economy grew at 6.2% in the second quarter of 2019 on a year over year basis. That was the lowest growth…
According to the Commerce Department, U.S. manufacturers have moved some of their supply chains away from China in 2019, increasing imports from Taiwan that are up 22%, and India, which…
The government measures inflation in eight major categories, and then weights them to produce an overall CPI index, or consumer price index. The consumer price index is a measure of…
According to the National Association of Realtors, the median sales price of existing homes sold in the United States, in June of 2019, was $285,700, which was a record price.…
According to the Treasury Department, foreign investors held $6.55 trillion of US Treasuries at the end of May of 2019, which is the highest level ever. Japan replace China as…
It was approximately eight years ago, on August 5th, 2011, when I was in Chicago's O'Hare Airport when it was announced, that the Standard & Poor's had downgraded the US…
On Monday, August 5th, the U.S. Treasury Department labeled China as a "currency manipulator" according to the Treasury Department. And this was the first time that the U.S. has made…
On July 31st of this year, the Federal Reserve cut their interest rate known as the Fed funds rate, by a quarter of a percent. This is the first cut…
According to the Commerce Department, as of March 31st of 2019 the overall US economy was $21 trillion in size. Fifty years ago, in 1969 the overall US economy was at…
According to BTN Research, In the last 50 years, the S&P 500 has been up 17.5% per year under a Democratic president and a Republican led Congress. Under a Republican…
So far this year we have seen the interest rates on bonds drop substantially and according to BTN research, the bond market through the end of July is up 6.3%…
According to the Treasury Department, the U.S. government has incurred an $867 billion deficit through its 10 months of fiscal of 2019, which ended July 31. During that time period,…
According to BTN research, the stock market has produced a total return of 14.7% over the last 10 years through June of 2019. The worst quarter over the last decade…
As we're coming to the late stages of the economic cycle, one of the indicators that I look at is new home construction. According to the census bureau, in 2018…
According to caring.com, 58% of Americans have not executed a will or other estate planning documents. Today I would like to go through what makes up a basic will in…
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the projected spending outlays for the U.S. government over the next 10 fiscal years is projected to be $57.8 trillion. That $57.8 trillion is…
Due to medical advances, people are living longer and longer. According to Social Security Administration, a 65-year-old couple today has a 48% chance that at least one of them will…
Today I would like to share a concept with you called Real Rate of Return I think it is important to know what your overall return on your portfolio is,…
This is the time of year when college kids graduate, and high school students start to enter the college. I know with my kids we have had many discussions about…
Often, I'm asked what the best investment is and where should I be investing my money right now. Obviously, it's difficult to know, but normally we look at overall allocations…
Student loan debt continues to become more and more talked about in the media, and I found an article from JPMorgan Chase that indicated that student loan debt reached a…
I've talked in the past about companies buying their stock back, but today, I want would like to go into a little more in detail about this because we saw…
My middle daughter will be graduating college in the next couple of weeks, and she has continued to hear me talk about the importance of how starting early in contributing…
What's happening in the market? As we're entering into the longest bull market in stock market history, it can be tempting to pull your investments out of the market and…
Today's video is going to hit home personally for me as I have one child that is graduating from college, and I have another one that is just starting college.…
Why Does the Fed Change Interest Rates? The Federal Reserve raises and lowers interest rates to try to keep the economy growing at a steady pace. As the economy weakens,…
I've seen a lot of reports from the Congressional Budget Office and most recently their 10-year projection for our government's annual budgets. What does the CBO project? In January of…
One of the bellwether Indexes in the bond market is the 10-year Treasury note. What is happening with the 10-year Treasury? According to Investopedia, a 10-year Treasury note is a…
When will the next recession be? Economists cannot say with precision when the next U.S. recession will take place, but many of the economists feel the economy is still strong…
In the beginning.... According to the Social Security administration, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed the Social Security Retirement Program back in 1935, the financial analyst in the White House…
How Has Technology Affected the Workforce? According to the Department of Labor, after adjusting for inflation, manufacturing output in the United States is up 62% over the last 30 years…
What is the average age to start saving? According to Nationwide Retirement Institute, a November 2018 survey of 1,161 employed adults determined that the average age which this group began…
The most common question I'm asked by clients is: Are we heading into a recession, or when do you think the recession will start? Certainly, nobody knows the answer to…
Why is my investment time horizon important? As I indicated before, 2018 was a challenging year for the majority of asset classes. But I want to reiterate the importance of…
According to the published On Balance newsletter, the proposed budget for fiscal 2019 is $4.4T. The government estimates that it will receive approximately $3.4T creating almost a $1T deficit. Where…
What did the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 do? The recent Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that was signed into law in December of 2017 included a one-time…
What is the S&P 500? When we refer to the S&P 500, the S&P 500 is a market value weighted index with each stock weighed in the index proportionate to…
What was the budget deficit for 2018? According to the Treasury Department, the budget deficit for the United States in its fiscal 2018 year, which ended on September 30th of…
In the fourth quarter of last year, from the peak of the market in September to the bottom of the market on December 24th, the overall stock market according to…
In my 30-year career, one of the things that we continue to convey to clients is diversification. Why is diversification important? Normally having money in different asset classes tends to…
Over the years, we have become accustomed to hearing everything about billions. Billions of people, billions in market cap, billions in sales but it appears now everything seems to be…
Today's video is going to hit home personally as my youngest son is a senior in high school, and we are now starting to evaluate the differences in tuition from…
Household Income Hits A New High As the economy has continued to grow during this economic cycle, it appears that household income has been going up too. According to the…
In all of my years as an investment advisor, the question I am asked the most is: How much money do I need to have to retire comfortably? Certainly, this…
Over the years we've seen a significant change in pension plans and today I wanted to talk to you about the defined benefit plan versus the defined contribution plans and…
What does it mean to diversify? I think an important concept that we've all heard over the years, but I think is often underutilized, is the case for diversification. When…
The government debt continues to grow, as does the interest cost. Welcome to Friday's financial fitness. I know that I have talked before a lot about our governments overall debt. But today…
