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 …
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 …
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 …
“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 …
Terrific piece from the always insightful Jeremy Grantham of GMO on the state of the financial markets and where things may be headed: Grantham August
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 …
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 …
So you want to invest socially responsibly, but aren’t really sure how to do it. Maybe you have a company retirement plan with SRI options or maybe you’ve saved some money and decided you want to put it to work. For those new to investing, mutual funds can be a good place to start. What’s …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
People are scratching their heads about Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype and the price they paid. They shouldn’t be. Microsoft had to purchase Skype and in our view they would have paid even more to do it. It was a must-have strategic acquisition. Google is running circles around Microsoft in cloud-based office-productivity and communications tool adoption …
We read a number of startup, entrepreneur and venture blogs with great interest, and since many of our clients are entrepreneurs we have an interest in matters that touch on personal finance issues specific to them. We were struck by Fred Wilson’s blog post on his own experience recycling capital earned from investments in startups …
We held our first “webinar” earlier this month on the timely topic of municipal bonds. We have posted the narrated presentation at www.youtube.com/wsqcapital for the benefit of those who were unable to attend. We plan to host three webinars this quarter: Thursday, April 21: What Makes an Investment Socially Responsible? (April 22 is Earth Day!) …