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What Makes an Investment Socially Responsible?

What Makes an Investment Socially Responsible?

  If you’re new to investing and thinking about putting your money to work using an approach that incorporates social or ethical criteria, it’s important to know what types of strategies are available to you and how to differentiate between them. When we consider the socially responsible investment (SRI) universe, there are five main strategies …

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2012 Themes: The More Things Change…

2012 Themes: The More Things Change…

Here are our top 10 investment themes for 2012.  These are the topics we think will have the biggest impact on client portfolios in the coming year…   1.  Steady as she goes: We think it unlikely the Fed will raise rates in 2012, largely due to the presidential election. With the ongoing crisis in …

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Q4 2011 Letter

Q4 2011 Letter

We hope you enjoyed a restful holiday with your family and are off to a great start to 2012. We’ve attached two documents to this letter: the first reviews our economic themes for 2011 (evaluating where we were right and where we were wrong) while the second outlines our investment themes for 2012 (topics we …

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Q3 2011 Letter

Q3 2011 Letter

The third quarter saw equity markets trade substantially lower from where they began—the S&P 500 index started the quarter at 1,320.64 and ended at 1,131.42, a loss of nearly 15%.  On October 4th, the S&P 500 saw an intraday low of 1,074.77, which marked a decline of more than 20% from the 2011 high of …

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Buyer Beware: Has the SEC Uncovered a Green Con?

Buyer Beware: Has the SEC Uncovered a Green Con?

When UK-based CO2 Tech began trading in the public equity markets in 2007, they appeared to be an ambitious, forward-looking company poised to tackle global climate change head-on.  According to one of their early press releases, they referred to themselves as a provider of cutting-edge, sophisticated anti-global warming technologies along with a full range of …

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All Eyes on Jackson Hole

All Eyes on Jackson Hole

  “It’s like deja vu all over again.” — Yogi Berra   Let’s take a look at some economic bullet points, shall we? * The stock market, after peaking in April, is in the midst of a summer swoon. * The sovereign debt crisis in Europe is getting progressively worse. * Unemployment remains stubbornly high …

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From the Archives: Beware CNBC and the Permabulls

From the Archives: Beware CNBC and the Permabulls

On July 30, 2007 Jeremy Siegel — Wharton professor and author of the popular investment book Stocks For The Long Run — appeared on CNBC to give his take on the stock market.  To put things in perspective, this was before the credit crisis had erupted, at a time when the economy was still considered …

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Where are we headed?

Where are we headed?

Stock markets around the globe have experienced a pronounced sell-off in recent weeks, culminating in yesterday’s 500 point Dow Jones Industrial Average decline. For investors that follow our blog and quarterly newsletter, these events should not come as a major surprise, as we have repeatedly expressed our skepticism with the sustainability of the stock market …

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2011 Q2 Letter

2011 Q2 Letter

  The second quarter of 2011 saw equity markets close down slightly over the last quarter – the S&P 500 began the quarter at 1,325.83 and ended at 1,320.64.  Losses were on track to be far more substantial until the last week of June when the S&P 500 rallied over 50 points in the final …

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Green Investing: The Old Rules Still Apply

Green Investing: The Old Rules Still Apply

So let’s say you’ve got some money you’d like to put to work in a socially responsible investment.  Maybe you received a bonus at your job, maybe you inherited some money from a relative or maybe you’ve just been diligently saving over the past few years and want to earn more than the pitifully low …

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History as enshrined in law: Another lesson to remember from the credit-crisis.

History as enshrined in law: Another lesson to remember from the credit-crisis.

We recently re-read a very good piece on Risk management lessons to remember from the credit-crisis 2007-2009 published by BlackRock. The document is well worth a read, and we recommend it highly for all professional investors. There are, however, a couple of things we wish the authors had added to the note. Particularly with regard …

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Silver Dominoes, or a Tale of the Merchant of Margin.

Silver Dominoes, or a Tale of the Merchant of Margin.

The sharp drop in silver last week made us think of price-support in different markets and how that depends on the constitution of market participants. When a significant percentage of a market is composed of financial buyers and speculators, many of them leveraged, it is prone to sharp, steep drops. It doesn’t matter whether the …

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