January 27th, 2023 Changes Coming in Inflation Reporting The Fed’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recently announced changes to the way the Consumer Price Index (CPI) measures inflation. The Fed’s February 12th announcement will include these newest changes. The government constantly fiddles with the CPI calculations, normally to make themselves look good, or at least not as bad. Some years ago, in researching for my college

December 30th, 2022 Seven Things Investors Can be Grateful for This Year Often we commentators focus on problems facing investors. Instead, I’d like to point out seven things that our clients have to be grateful for this past year. 1) Cash is making a comeback. It has been a long time since cash accounts paid anything above diddly. In fact, 10 out of the past 14

November 25th, 2022 Are We in For a Lost Decade? A frequent topic in the financial news recently has been the concept of a Lost Decade. The term first came into use in the 1990s after Japan’s Nikkei Index dropped over fifty percent and took 16 years to regain the 1990 level. (Source: Investopedia) My term for these periods is Generational Bear Markets, not necessarily because they last

October 28th, 2022 Snakes With the turbulent financial markets this year, I am often asked, “How are you doing with the market being so bad?” I usually reply something along the lines of, “Pretty well. At Shadowridge, we expected bear markets in both stocks and bonds and had plans in place for how to deal with them. We recognized these declines for what they were when

September 30th, 2022 Just How Bad Are Things? We all have heard someone complain about how bad things are these days, or how afraid they are about what the kids growing up today will have to deal with, or that the future looks bleaker each year, or, or, or. World-weariness affects almost all of us at times – but are things really that bad? Steven Pinker,