All you can take with you is that which you’ve given away The journey from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day is often a sprint. “Gratitude Month” culminates in Giving Tuesday, which quickly gives way to generous holiday giving in December, and we’re off to new beginnings in January! I don’t know of another film that […]
Is that it? Is the stock market drama from the last few months over? When we’ve come through a challenging time in the markets, it helps to have a moment of reflection. In the Army, we called them After-Action Reviews (AARs). The goal is to make a clear-eyed assessment of our decisions during times of […]
Market Turbulence and Risk Investors often confuse market turbulence or volatility with risk. The unpredictable ups and downs of the market can be stomach-churning. But that isn’t actual risk. The real risk is the possibility that, in a volatile and confusing situation, you make an emotional decision that puts your financial security in jeopardy. Someone […]
I just bought my first new car in 10 years. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way—I had planned for a deliberate purchase in 2025. But plans don’t always unfold as expected. For months, my Grand Cherokee had been showing signs of age. The windshield wiper sensors were glitchy, the transmission was fading, and the […]
I was prompted by a question from Peter Thiel’s book Zero to One which I am finally getting around to reading. He asks this in every job interview: “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?” The answer reveals a contrarian view that is essentially the seed for a disruptive business or […]
As pitchers and catchers report for spring training, I am reminded of my career as a third-string catcher and the lessons learned along the way. The call came on a Spring Saturday afternoon when I was 13 years old. I had tried out for my first travel baseball team, and the coach of the Harford […]
This is about wellness, health, and yes, money. Have you ever gone a long time without looking at your account balances? Ever held off on checking in with your advisor because you were afraid your financial plan was off-track? Does anxiety about financial headlines keep you from learning more about money and investing? I have […]
Dear Reader, Looking forward, I am an optimist. Looking back, I am a historian. It’s what I am in the present that has helped me become a better investor: Unemotional. For investors, the last four years have been historic…and exhausting. We had the fastest recession, fastest recovery, fastest inflation, and the fastest interest rates. Not […]
Dear Reader, The first dramatic pivot of my career happened in the summer before my senior year of college, in the rain, staring at a military tank. I was at Ft. Lewis, WA attending a four-week-long ROTC training with a thousand other cadets. It was branch orientation day, where all the branches of the Army […]
I started my career as an advisor the old-fashioned way: With a telephone and a list of numbers. Cold calling was the way to find clients for decades on Wall Street. But in the ‘Do Not Call’ days of 2006, the path to success was not the same. Still, each day I had a piece […]