Year-End Charitable Giving

With the holiday season upon us and the end of the year approaching, we pause to give thanks for our blessings and the people in our lives. It is also a time when charitable giving often comes to mind. The tax benefits associated with charitable giving could potentially enhance your ability to give and should…

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After a Massive Breach, Is Your Data in Danger?

National Public Data, a consumer data broker, confirmed last week that a hacker had targeted the company in December 2023, “with potential leaks of certain data in April 2024 and summer 2024.”Other reports indicate that this leaked data had been found on the dark web and could include the names, addresses, phone numbers, and Social…

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Morning Market Commentary Q1 2023

During the first quarter of 2023 sentiment started off hot with great gains in January but had its ebbs and flows throughout the quarter.  The belief that the Federal Reserve was going to be able to tame inflation and the economy would be able to establish a “soft landing” in terms of a possible recession…

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Morning Market Commentary Q4 2022

In an otherwise volatile and ugly year, the fourth quarter of 2022 turned out to be a pleasant surprise.  Sentiment turned optimistic mainly led by better-than-expected corporate earnings and Year-over-Year inflation rates coming down from a peak of 9.1% in June 2022. S&P, Dow, and NASDAQ The S&P 500 was able to climb higher by…

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Morning Market Commentary for Q2 2022

By the end of the first quarter, it seemed as if we had gone through a much-needed correction, and we were on our way to a recovery. That theory ended quickly as the 2nd quarter turned into something much worse as we entered bear market territory for the first time since March of 2020. It…

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The Bull Is Back… Will It Keep Charging?

On August 18, 2020, the S&P 500 set a record high for the first time since COVID-19 ushered in a bear market on February 19. The cycle from peak to peak was just 126 trading days, the fastest recovery in the history of the index, erasing losses from an equally historic plunge of almost 34%…

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Q2 2020 – Second Quarter Stock Market Commentary

There is an old saying on Wall Street, “The stock market is not the economy and the economy is not the stock market.” We all got a little taste of that this past quarter when we saw a negative -4.8% GDP in the first quarter and predictions of negative -30% to -50% GDP for the second quarter. We saw record…

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2019 Q4 Market Commentary

One year ago, the market was convinced that our economy was headed for a recession and we began 2019 on the heels of one of the worst quarterly market returns in more than a decade.  This could not have been further from the truth.  Once the market figured out that a recession was not happening,…

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Understanding Risk

Few terms in personal finance are as important, or used as frequently, as “risk.” Nevertheless, few terms are as imprecisely defined. Generally, when financial advisors or the media talk about investment risk, their focus is on the historical price volatility of the asset or investment under discussion. Advisors label as aggressive or risky an investment…

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