Category: Market Commentary

Market Commentary Q2 – 2015

| Jonathan Smith
Grinding Like a Garden Tiller The human brain works nonstop trying to figure out what the eye sees. It’s been working overtime trying to figure this one out: over the last year, the Dow has gone up one percent and down one percent 53 times. Over this time, it traveled 42,823.56 points up and down,
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Market Commentary Q1 – 2015

| Justin Smith
When Millie and I got married, we had a wedding shower where people gave us marital wisdom to go along with their gift. I remember hearing cutesy advice like “don’t waste all the good kid names on your pets” and “soak up these first years, they are so much fun.” They were sweet and sincere
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Market Commentary Q4 – 2014

| Jonathan Smith
When Justin was in high school, he and I rebuilt a 1977 International Harvest Scout II. We bought it for $1400 from Wilkes Community College where the Auto Shop students had been experimenting on it like it was a rolling Frankenstein; we had our work cut out for us. After we repaired a D+ student’s
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fixed-income-sector-returns

Market Commentary Q3 – 2014

| Justin Smith
Our son, Everett, just turned 18 months old last week. And after having two tutu-wearing daughters (Grayson now 7 and Finley Cate now almost 5) it felt like a real “win” for me, as a dad, to have my son’s favorite word be “truck.” And that doesn’t really even do the word justice, because he
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Market Commentary Q1 – 2014

| Justin Smith
Chasing Returns and Wagon Wheels Growing up, I loved to listen to my dad (known to me Monday through Friday 8-5 and in this commentary going forward as “Jonathan”) as he would read the stories of Uncle Remus by Joel Chandler Harris. Harris, a journalist and editor of the Atlanta Constitution in the late 1800’s,
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Market Commentary Q4 – 2013

| Jonathan Smith
Themes for 2014 This past year might go down as one of the “worst best” years in market history. The combination of cash still on the sidelines, abysmal bond returns and a poorly attended stock rally will do that. While we stay away from predictions, we have put together our important themes for the coming
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Market Commentary Q3 – 2013

| Justin Smith
“We the People, In Order to Form a More Perfect Union…” Last month, we sent our first kid off to kindergarten and I quickly discovered one of the joys of parenthood: learning from your kids. Every morning in September, all the students at her school would recite (well, really sing the “Schoolhouse Rock!” version of)
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Market Commentary Q2 – 2013

| Jonathan Smith
Ben Bernanke probably spent at least a couple minutes reading his pocket thesaurus, looking one last time for another way to say it. When no new words came about, he stepped up to the microphone at the Fed’s June 20 press conference hoping to shed light on the FOMC Statement from the day before. Investors
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Market Commentary Q1 – 2013

| Justin Smith
Margin of Safety, simply put, is the world’s oldest and cheapest form of insurance against stupidity, overconfidence and bad luck…and a few months ago, I apparently needed insurance against all three. With the arrival of our third child on the horizon, my wife finally gave up her cool mom image and decided she needed a
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