The second quarter of 2014 saw global markets rise after shrugging off a number of geo-political concerns clustered primarily around the middle-east (Ukraine, Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, Palestine). Stocks and bonds in the US have continued their march upwards with the S&P 500 and Dow Jones indices scaling all-time highs. There is some speculation that turmoil …
If you follow the clean energy investment space, you’ve probably heard the term “YieldCo” thrown around quite a bit in recent months. YieldCos have burst onto the investment scene and quickly become the company structure du jour for publicly traded power producers looking to capitalize on their renewable energy assets. In the past year, we’ve …
Dear Friends, The first quarter of 2014 saw an uptick in stock market volatility as a change in Fed leadership and Russia’s annexation of Crimea caused some investors to rethink investment and trading positions. The Dow Jones Industrials finished the quarter -0.72%, the S&P 500 +1.3% and the Nasdaq 100 was +0.54%. Meanwhile, after a …
Dear Friends, We’d like to start off by wishing you a very happy and healthy 2014. We trust you enjoyed the holiday break with family and friends. At the beginning of each year, we put together a list of our top 10 investment themes and predictions for the year ahead. We’ve done this now for …
At year-end, we review our economic themes for 2013. We give ourselves 8 out of 10 points, for 7 themes that hit the mark, and two that were partially realized. We were flat out wrong on one. üEurope lingers: “…In our view, the European Union will have to provide financial assistance to one or more …
Dear Friends, We hope you had a pleasant summer with family and friends. The third quarter of 2013 saw global financial markets encounter some turbulence, driven largely by fears of central bank monetary tightening. The Federal Reserve issued a series of statements early in the summer, essentially warning investors the era of large-scale monthly bond …
For the past couple of years, we have been highlighting to our clients the fact that the market value of their bond portfolios will drop when rates rise. This is especially true of long-bonds. However, we haven’t often explictly discussed the impact this can have on stocks. All else being equal, rising interest rates exert …
A story about the founding of Yelp led us to wonder why Zagat didn’t create Yelp. The core idea (reviews by consumers) is exactly identical, and the Zagats had their brainstorm in 1979. Why couldn’t they translate the phenomenal success of their printed reviews and their formidable brand into an online presence with a moat …
“There’s only four things [America does] better than anyone else: music, movies, microcode (software), and high-speed pizza delivery.” — Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash. There are increasingly, two different economies in the country, the knowledge economy, and the physical economy. The knowledge economy is thriving, since that is most of what we export nowadays and much …
We don’t often write about individual companies on our blog since we feel all investments need to be considered in the context of a portfolio and an investor’s objectives. We will be making an exception here, since we’re gong to discuss the evolution of an industry where the pace of creative destruction has been frantic, …
A recent article in the Financial times, Clash of the CAPE Crusaders, on the radically different conclusions arrived at by Jeremy Seigel and Robert Shiller when evaluating long-range stock results reminded us of an draft post we had begun a while ago. This debate between value investors and others has been running for a long …
In our SRI portfolios, we screen companies and industries for those actors who run sustainable businesses. Their usage of resources and fulfillment of broader responsibility counts as much as their financial prospects. Ocassionally, we step back from our narrow interests in a specific company or industry to look at the broader picture. We did that …
We hope you are enjoying the summer thus far. In the financial markets, things seem to be heating up as temperatures rise across the northern hemisphere. The events of the last few weeks of June seem to have triggered a wake-up call for many investors who may have been lulled into a false sense of …
We hope 2013 has gotten off to a good start for you. We want to start off by wishing you a Happy Earth Day! We exhibited at the Green Festival in NYC over the weekend, and it was great to see so many friends there, and to make some new ones. We are always pleasantly …
We are at the NYC Green Festival this weekend, talking to visitors about Socially Responsible Investing. Stop by and visit up at booth 321, Javits North.