The Big Picture

OCTOBER 2, 2023

We all love to use quotations in our arguments. It’s both an appeal to higher authority as well as social proof ( Hey! I’m not the only one who believes this stuff ). I find it useful occasionally to go back to first principles and reconsider the sources that have influenced my thinmking. Along those lines, here are in chronological order, the thinkers who have helped shape how I view the world view, including how I philosophically think about the economy, markets, and investing.

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The Reformed Broker

JULY 4, 2023

You know Hancock and Washington and Franklin and Jefferson. You might even know Greene and Knox, Henry and Hale. And we know you know Hamilton, pretty tough to escape that one these days! But it is very unlikely that you know the name Haym Solomon. This is unfortunate, because he’s the guy who arranged financing to keep the Continental Army alive during its darkest days, finding the money to keep the revolution goin.

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Marketing Marketing 361

Carson Wealth

DECEMBER 11, 2023

Stocks Remain Strong Stocks took a break last week, which was perfectly normal after a five-week win streak coming off the late-October lows. It is important to remember that stocks lead the economy, both on the way up and the way down. Various indexes are closing in on new all-time highs, and one of the most important indexes in the world is already there.

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Marketing Marketing Economy Compliance 143

A Wealth of Common Sense

NOVEMBER 24, 2023

Personal finance was my first love in the money world. I was a saver before I ever knew what investing even was. Yet my relationship with personal finance has evolved as I’ve aged and changed my habits. Many of the personal finance rules written in stone will always apply. Live below your means. Pay yourself first. Stay out of credit card debt.

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Investing Investments 145

Speaker: Duke Heninger, Partner and Fractional CFO at Ampleo & Creator of CFO System

Are you ready to elevate your accounting processes for 2025? 🚀 Join us for an exclusive webinar led by Duke Heninger, a seasoned fractional CFO and CPA passionate about transforming back-office operations for finance teams. This session will cover critical best practices and process improvements tailored specifically for accounting professionals.

Accounting

The Reformed Broker

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

“When I see a bubble forming I rush in to buy, adding fuel to the fire. That is not irrational.” – George Soros, 2009 I’ve spent 25 years watching, trading and investing in the stock market. The repetition of patterns is amazing. In every generation we see new bubbles, which form when a new innovation comes along and everyone gets excited about the future.

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Carson Wealth

DECEMBER 8, 2023

By Mark N. Petersen, CPA, CFP ® , CP, Affluent Wealth Planning The holidays are upon us! That must mean it’s time to roll up my sleeves and get to work on year-end financial planning – with an emphasis on 2023 income tax. One consideration this year is that we’re two years from the expiration of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TJCA). This will mean: · Elimination of the state and local tax cap of $10,000 · The return of other itemized deductions in 2026 · Reversion of individua

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The Big Picture

OCTOBER 19, 2023

One of my favorite responsibilities as chief investment officer at Ritholtz Wealth Management is the quarterly conference call I do for our clients. I run through 30 charts in 30 minutes that explain where we are in the economic cycle, what markets are doing, and what it means to their portfolios. I like to finish with a thought-provoking, often “investing-adjacent” idea they might not have previously considered.

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Wealth Management

SEPTEMBER 18, 2023

The South and Midwest dominate the top of the rankings.

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Retirement 131

A Wealth of Common Sense

JUNE 2, 2023

The AI craze is in full effect so everyone is trying to figure out who the winners will be. Maybe it will be the upstarts, some new start-up that gives you your own personal assistant in your ear, on your iPhone and at your desk. Or maybe it will be the big tech players who have gobs of money to throw at AI like Microsoft, Google and Facebook. Maybe it’s a company like NVIDIA that supplies the chips and software.

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Marketing Marketing 145

Speaker: Abdi Ali, Sr. Lease Accounting Consultant

Join this insightful webinar with industry expert Abdi Ali, who will discuss the challenges that can arise from managing lease accounting with spreadsheets! He will share real-world examples of errors, compliance issues, and risks that may be present within your spreadsheets. Learn how these tools, while useful, can sometimes lead to inefficiencies that affect your time, resources, and peace of mind.

Accounting

Abnormal Returns

OCTOBER 22, 2023

Top clicks this week We are living through the worst bond bear market in history. (awealthofcommonsense.com) Just how expensive are the 'Magnificent Seven' stocks? (blog.validea.com) Why TIPS now merit 'serious consideration.' (morningstar.com) There is no single definitive model for the term premium. (wsj.com) Do investors really understand the return profile of options-writing funds?

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Marketing Marketing 310

The Chicago Financial Planner

FEBRUARY 8, 2023

Contrary to what some politicians might say, your Social Security benefits are not an entitlement. You’ve paid Social Security taxes over the course of your working life and you’ve earned these benefits. Many retirees and others collecting Social Security wonder about the tax treatment of their benefit. The answer to the question in the title is that your Social Security benefits may be subject to taxes.

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Taxes Retirement Financial Planner Financial Advisor 291

The Reformed Broker

NOVEMBER 29, 2023

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the final post I will be publishing at The Reformed Broker. After today the site will be inactive, forever. I began this blog in November 2008 without any idea where it would take me. I had a negative net worth, was working at a dead-end brokerage firm job and absolutely no career prospects whatsoever – a washed up stock broker at 31 years old in the middle of a global financial crisis.

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The Big Picture

NOVEMBER 16, 2023

Over at Alphaville , Robin Wigglesworth looks at whether ‘Greedflation’ (aka price-gouging) meaningfully contributed to Eurozone inflation. Specifically, Bank of England research suggests that while they “find no evidence of a rise in overall profits in the UK” they did notice that “companies in the oil, gas and mining sectors have bucked the trend” with “some companies… much more profitable than others.”1 I was pretty skeptical about Greedflation initia

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Banking Economics Accounting Marketing 358

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Accounting

The Big Picture

MAY 5, 2023

Imagine you had a device that allowed you to peer into the future. You enter a subject matter into this machine, requesting a specific quantitative measure, and at a specific future time. In other words, Price and Date. The machine whirrs and spins, lights flash, bells ring, and out pops a chart showing a range of answers and their probabilities. You might imagine a machine like that would be worth a lot.

Economics 363

Economics Financial Planning Manufacturing Numbers 363

The Big Picture

MAY 4, 2023

I have been writing about issues with the minimum wage for (it seems like) decades. During that time, consuming lots of academic research, I reached a few logically supported conclusions. The least contentious of which is that modest increases in minimum wages increase economic activity and create jobs. But there are other surprises around the minimum wage.

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Food Economy Retail Retirement 364

The Reformed Broker

MAY 17, 2023

Just wanted to take a moment to recognize the incredible work my media and research teams have been doing to propel The Compound channel past 120,000 subscribers this month. And that 120k is just a fragment of the audience because almost everything we do on video is also on the audio podcast channels too. For those who are new to what we’re doing at the Compound YouTube channel each week, below is the schedule of w.

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Media 361

The Big Picture

DECEMBER 11, 2023

No, “ nearly half ” of $94.5 billion in retail inventory losses in 2021 was not “attributable to organized retail crime.” That line is just another in a long series of falsehoods put forth by the professional b *s at the National Retail Federation. Here’s Reuters : “The main lobbying group for U.S. retailers retracted its claim that “organized retail crime” accounted for nearly half of all inventory losses in 2021 after finding that incorrect data was used for its analysis.

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Retail Accounting Sales Numbers 353

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Banking

The Big Picture

NOVEMBER 22, 2023

We spend way too much time trying to predict the future (especially this time of year). Rather than engage in futility, let’s look at the coincident indexes in all 50 states over the past 3 months, via the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia (October 2023). Note: I have been occasionally eyeballing this map since 2008 , and it does a good job of showing the overall trend of the economy (on an obvious lag).

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Economy Banking 353

The Reformed Broker

MARCH 12, 2023

I feel pretty confident in making this call, and I don’t make market calls very often: We have seen the top for 2-year Treasury yields. It’s not going any higher than it’s been because there’s no reason for it to. Financial conditions are now contracting hard due in part to the events of this week but also because monetary policy operates on a lag – and the first Fed Funds hike of the cycle.

Marketing 361

Marketing Marketing 361

The Big Picture

MAY 5, 2023

My end-of-week morning NFP train WFH reads: • Warren Buffett’s Formula for Success: One Good Decision Every Five Years : Berkshire Hathaway has obliterated the market in his 58 years at the company. He credits roughly 12 decisions. ( Wall Street Journal ) see also The 10 Greatest US Investors and the Virtues That Made Them : There can be few fields of human endeavor in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance.

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Startup Wealth Management Assets Management 359

The Big Picture

MAY 3, 2023

At least they told us what they were going to do. As much as critics of the Federal Reserve have been up in arms over the fastest rate hiking cycle in modern history, no one can claim it to be a surprise. Jerome Powell & Co. have continually warned that they are aggressively fighting inflation with a 5% target. They said it in Fed minutes, they said it in pressers, they said it in speeches; we just took them figuratively, not literally.

Economy 353

Economy 353

Speaker: Joe Buhrmann, MBA, CFP®, CLU®, ChFC® Senior Financial Planning Practice Management Consultant eMoney Advisor

During an era of evolving consumer preferences, the banking sector is undergoing a profound shift. As customers continue to broaden their perspectives, banking professionals must support their customers' financial wellness by providing holistic financial advice that aligns with individual goals and circumstances. Without adapting, financial institutions will find that loyalty may crumble amid uncertainty.

Financial Advice

The Reformed Broker

JUNE 17, 2023

Please read this from Michael Santoli: Just as the depth of despond evident in investor-sentiment gauges around Labor Day was out of proportion to what the market and economy had been doing, the volume of cheer engendered by this four-week, 9% rally looks to be running at least a bit ahead of what has, after all, been a marginal upside exit from a long, grinding trading range.

Marketing 351

Marketing Marketing Economy 351

The Big Picture

NOVEMBER 15, 2023

Markets screamed higher yesterday after a benign CPI report showed a 0.0% monthly price increase and inflation falling to 3.2% year over year. After a big gap opening, latecomers piled in; many had been sitting on the sidelines following a challenging 2022, while others got panicked out during the 10% October drawdown. It was a classic fear-driven error, a combination of bad market timing and poor impulse control.

Investments 344

Investments Investing Portfolio Economics 344

The Reformed Broker

JANUARY 25, 2023

Bitcoin is a middling technology that, 15 years after its introduction to the world, still does not have a single legitimate use case in the developed world where it’s the best possible solution to a problem. It’s worse than our traditional stores of value (gold, US dollar) because of its inherent volatility (roughly 5x more volatile than the stock market).

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Marketing Marketing 353

The Big Picture

APRIL 12, 2023

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) rose 0.1 percent in March on a seasonally-adjusted basis, after increasing 0.4 percent in February. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 5.0 percent before seasonal adjustment. ( April 2023 ) As much as I want to jump up and down about 0.1% seasonally adjusted (after a 0.4% prior month), the big number is not so big: 5.0% A 5 handle is a huge development, even with the core remaining sligh

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Food Numbers 351

Speaker: Carolina Aponte - Owner and CEO, Caja Holdings LLC

In today's rapidly changing business environment, building a resilient balance sheet is crucial to the survival of any business. A resilient balance sheet allows a company to withstand financial shocks and adapt to changing market conditions. To achieve this, companies need to focus on key strategies such as maintaining adequate liquidity, managing debt levels, diversifying revenue streams, and prioritizing profitability over growth.

Financial Planning

The Reformed Broker

JUNE 11, 2023

The parabolic spike in 2-year Treasury bond rates this winter ended with a crescendo on Thursday, March 9th and Friday March 10th. That week, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank had thoroughly spooked the markets and convinced traders that the Federal Reserve would be forced to start downshifting its hiking cycle and the accompanying hawkish rhetoric.

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The Reformed Broker

APRIL 5, 2023

I get a lot of emails and LinkedIn messages about our “funnel” these days. Hiring funnel, sales funnel, etc. Usually it’s coming from well-meaning companies who are focused on recruiting and headhunting or lead generation and prospecting. A typical firm in our industry is probably in need of what they’re offering. I have tried to build an atypical firm.

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The Reformed Broker

APRIL 1, 2023

The prompt: The output, copy-pasted into my blog’s CMS: This is a rainbow stripe! Obviously anyone who knows how to code could have knocked this out in a second without even having to think about it. But how many people don’t know how to code? Most? We’re heading into a future in which not knowing how to do a thing is going to matter much less than ever before.

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