The Best Strategies For Inflationary Times
As parents (myself included) apprehensively sent their kids back into the classroom for another pandemic-influenced school year, it put me in the mood to chip away at my own reading list, a collection of research papers that had accumulated in the “to read” folder on my desktop. Now, before you condemn me to the nerd-set,…
Read MoreHow Do Financial Advisors Invest During Irrational Exuberance?
I love the beach, but I am not a huge fan of the ocean. Maybe I’m alone here, but after watching “Jaws,” National Geographic programming, Shark Week on Discovery, and “Sharknado” 1-6, I just cannot shake that uneasy feeling when I’m venturing into the surf. Even when I’ve had the privilege of swimming or snorkeling…
Read MoreThe Line Between Chasing Winners And Catching a Falling Knife
A few weeks ago, my family spent a week at the beach. There’s this arcade on the boardwalk. I’m sure you know the kind: Drop a $20 in the change machine, hope your 8-year-old can keep the Skee-Ball in her own lane, and then trade your tickets for some plastic toy that inevitably will provoke…
Read MoreWhat ‘Tommy Boy’ Teaches Us About Guarantees
What are your re-watchable movies? For me, it’s several cult classics from the mid-90s. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve seen them, if I happen to catch them when flipping through the channels, I’m going to stop. Unfortunately, I usually end up only watching briefly until my wife rolls her eyes and asks, “Again…really?”…
Read MoreAnyone Want to Acknowledge The Bear In the Bond Market?
In a time when seemingly all assets are “melting up,” allow me to invoke one of my favorite Saturday Night Live characters, Debbie Downer, and provide a less-than-rosy dose of reality: U.S. government bonds, which have a “market cap” that’s equivalent to 2x the U.S. stock market, have all entered a bear market. If you…
Read MoreIs it ESG? Or Just a Load of E…‘BS’…G?
Doesn’t it seem like Wall Street can monetize a movement like nobody else? Perhaps that’s what makes it so interesting when one of its own blows the whistle to question authenticity. Tariq Fancy, former Chief Investment Officer of Sustainable Investing at BlackRock, recently provided a scathing opinion piece on the current state of ESG investing.…
Read MoreThe 60/40 Portfolio Problem
My colleague, Brandon Langley, and I began writing about the pitfalls of a traditional 60/40 portfolio back before it was trendy. He and I felt so strongly about the topic that we published a white paper in August of 2018. Some considered us renegades back then for having the audacity to question what had been…
Read MoreThe 2020 Remix: Trend Following & Pop Culture
At Blueprint Investment Partners, we like to think that our trend-following proclivities have many applications. Some (like our ability to systematically manage assets for our advisor clients) are certainly more useful than others (like the fresh 2020 pop culture reference that will come when you read on). We’re not above keeping on the pulse of…
Read MoreESG Investing: How It’s Going in the Real World (Part 3)
You may have seen or heard about the, “how it started…how it’s going,” trend that’s been going around the internet lately. The concept is to show the passage of time in two images, often to highlight accomplishments and sometimes purely for comedic value — you’ll find examples of each in this post. In this blog,…
Read MoreESG Investing: Driven by Risk Management & Client Demand (Part 2)
There’s been a paradigm shift in our recent conversations with financial advisors about ESG investing. Whereas ESG investors previously were thought by some to be anti-capitalist tree huggers, this silly trope has run its course. Instead, there is a realization that optimal management of resources, social equity, and ethical corporate administration can significantly benefit human…
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