I don’t know about you but the list of things I understand and can control seems to be getting shorter and more pronounced. One thing I know, from the details to the nuanced big picture, is financial planning.    Perhaps ironically, financial planning (and investment management) is mostly about controlling what we can control and hedging against the things we can’t. And one of the obvious and important variables we can’t control is our life expectancy. W…

It felt like the start of another busy week as I wrote this yesterday morning. Aren’t they all busy? We have new tariffs on trading partners, renewed war in the Middle East impacting oil prices again, and we have a Fed interest rate decision on Wednesday. Here are some updates along these lines. First, regarding new tariffs… Tariffs are taxes and the main questions are the average dollar amount of the levies and who ultimately pays them. Our average tariff rate…

Context is key… see the forest for the trees… don’t sweat the small stuff… whether maxim or idiom, being able to see the big picture is critical to just about everything we do. And this is especially true with investing. Our daily feeds are full of “news” and various tidbits of information organized by algorithms that could, if followed like breadcrumbs, easily lead us astray. What helps is having trusted sources of information that act as a guide, providing detail…

I try to be an optimist but it’s scary out there. Pick your category and you’ll find more than enough detail to keep you up at night. Among the variety of things I worry about, fraud risk is high on the list. It just seems so easy these days. Maybe because on the one hand it can be so basic, like a crook dumpster diving for documents, while on the other hand it can be highly technical, like someone somewhere breaking into your computer and tracking every keystroke…

The second quarter of 2026 (Q2) was eventful, as they all seem to be lately. The stock market rallied off first-quarter lows enough that major indexes had their best quarter in recent years. This impressive performance came from mixed market conditions, more inflation and a new Fed Chair, the on-again-off-again peace process with Iran, and shifts within the expanding AI investment story.   Here's a summary of how major market indexes have performed during Q2…

Before I begin this morning, here’s an interesting chart I received yesterday from JPMorgan looking at inflation since the last time the World Cup was held here in 1994. Not much commentary but look at the red bars compared to the blue… wages averaged higher than the CPI, but both were exceeded by at least a few items. How we spend our money absolutely impacts how we experience inflation. Okay, on to this week’s post… You’re familiar with the “4% Rule”, right…