September 3, 2019 Over-Hyping a Possible Recession The financial media is fretting about an interest rate phenomenon called a “yield curve inversion” in the United States that Bloomberg first reported on December 3, 2018, saying that it means that a recession is imminent. If one happens, it’ll be the most well-announced recession in history. It is true that recessions have often followed yield curve inversions 3-12

August 6, 2019 Elections and Policy Changes With the Democrat debates underway, concerns abound among investors about the election outcome and what victory for Democrats might mean with their proposed radical program changes that could affect health, banking, tech and energy – which are all highly regulated industries. I don’t know what the outcome will be but as usual, I expect to recognize it when I

July 2, 2019 Intentionally Fake News or Just Bad Guesses? I frequently rail against misleading financial news, and don’t get me started on what I think about most political news.  News doesn’t have to be intentionally fake to be damaging to your financial well-being.  A good example is this Wall Street Journal piece (6/10/2019, Pg. B-1, By Avantika Chilkoti and Daniel Kruger) forwarded from friend John

June 4, 2019 Who Gets the Data Collected by Your Smart Car? Hepburn Capital maintains an extensive network of procedures to protect your data (data encryption/firewalls, etc.) However, when I see articles like the one below, it makes me feel like our little slice of your data may be secure but there is so much more that we all are losing control of every day. I

May 13, 2019 Protecting Your Investments from a Trade War This is a short update about what we are doing here at HCM with the trade war dominating the financial news and markets. First of all, tariffs don’t stop trade, but are a tax on goods which makes the targeted goods more expensive to buy, ultimately slowing down sales. But tariffs themselves are not likely to