Author: Neil Rose, CFA

We have experienced a benign 2025 so far despite a correction in the stock market and higher volatility. Modest stock allocations and gains in insurance stocks (our single largest industry exposure), gold, and newer fixed income buys have buoyed account values.

As far as investments and what's going on today, I'm still sleeping just fine. I think you should, too. The roadmap laid out in previous letters has been followed. Stock levels are low, and what we have is outperforming overall.

In his 2011 book Debt: The First 500 Years, anthropologist David Graeber lays out the historical concept of debt, starting with the Sumer, the earliest known civilization, located in historical Mesopotamia around 3500 BCE.

Nearly five years ago, bond yields dropped to levels never seen in the thousands of years humans have been lending to one another. The shortest maturity fixed-income securities yielded virtually zero in the U.S. and less than zero in Europe and Japan.

2024 was another good year for stocks overall thanks to continued strength in just a handful of the largest technology and internet companies. The famed “Magnificent Seven” once again comprised the bulk of stocks’ overall returns.

Kawika Shoji and Neil Rose discuss the potential market reactions to a Trump or Harris win on election day.

Major Info Tech earnings announcements this week. Kawika Shoji gets some reactions and thoughts from Neil Rose on the tech sector now and going forward.

Returns this year have been kinder than I would have expected given our rather conservative positioning. Stock allocations have been lower than usual, with little in information technology and internet-related stocks, two areas that have accounted for the lion’s share of the stock market’s returns in recent years.

This week the Federal Reserve cut its short-term interest rate policy by half a percent to 4.75%-5.00%, marking an end to a two-year effort to recoup some of the excesses in Covid stimulus.

Neil Rose explains why he's taking some profits and getting more defensive as investors continue to pump up stock valuations, especially Big Tech. Neil worries the markets are now depending on one big assumption, and the costs of being wrong are high.

Despite several requests, I have been remiss in posting the note I had to submit with my induction into Harvard’s Varsity Club Hall of Fame back in November. They ask awardees to write some reflections on their college experience.

Capital markets in 2023 showed investors’ resilience—or was it complacency? Clearer was yet another lesson on the dangers in following forecasts, especially those of policymakers, PhDs, and Wall Street strategists. The Fed’s interest rate hikes and tough inflation talk didn’t cause an “inevitable” 2023 recession after all.