All our standard model portfolios finished January with gains. So, I am very pleased to report that. Making money when everyone else is losing is fantastic, and certainly involves some degree of luck. In many respects, I’d rather be lucky than good – but it has also been said that luck is where preparation meets opportunity – and Elevate has prepared well for 2020.

Happy New Year!

With 2019 in the rear-view we look forward to 2020 with great excitement and a healthy dose of caution.

Only 6 days into the year and our country is all but on the brink of a new war in the middle east, this time with Iran directly. The market (so far) seems to not care all that much.

Much has changed in the past several years since we started fracking for oil in the USA. It used to be that when tensions flared in the middle east, the price of crude oil would spike meaningfully higher, but we assassinated the top military figure in Iran and crude went up a whopping [sarcasm implied] three bucks - $3. I suppose to be fair it was up almost $5 at one point. It is hard to believe…

I am pleased with our results for 2019 so far and with a short time left in the calendar year (a completely arbitrary deadline for everyone I know) I am confident that we are appropriately positioned across all our strategies for whatever may come next – not just for the next few weeks but well into the future.             

There have been 5 separate pullbacks of 8% or more since the election. And since January of 2018, 22 months ago, the S&P 500 has risen only 8%.

E-TRADE generated around $5B over the past 3 years in “net interest income” compared

to only $1.3B worth of commissions from executing trades.

How much does “free” cost? And cograts to Jacob Going on his new title!

We’ll start today off with a great big “HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!” to my beautiful and talented wife, Chanelle.

This is #6… of infinity. I look forward to all the rest, but I am most thankful for today! We are totally the couple where strangers look and say “Jeez, how did that happen?”  She’s way out of my league and I am a lucky guy!

August was the second losing month of 2019 for the S&P 500 (SPX) and other major stock indexes. Bonds were the place to be last month. Our portfolios weathered the storm well losing less than 1% on average. Some portfolios with heavy exposure to municipal bonds even pulled off a gain for the month.

Yesterday was a big day for Elevate, and for me personally. We received word that I, and Jacob, both passed Level III of the CFA® Exam.

Long-time clients know that this is something that I have been working toward for the better part of 5 years and that the CFA Charter is one of the most challenging and prestigious credentials to earn, in any practice, anywhere in the world.

Things are cheap in terms of dollars. And as American’s we take this for granted. We expect that when we hop on Amazon.com tomorrow, this item will be roughly the same price - again in terms of dollars. Folks in other countries have no such expectation. We Americans are extremely lucky to own the world’s reserve currency and that there so much demand for our currency.

Next time you are in Denver, I encourage you to stop by the LocalHost Arena in Lakewood (and check out the scene. Pull up a chair and give computer, console, or virtual reality gaming a try. It’s always fun to try new things – and it is super fun to be able to play football with the kids without concern for a bum knee.

Negative interest rates are not a “net-benefit” to the global economy, rather negative interest rates are a travesty of the global economy. The only folks who benefit are the risk-takers who borrow money cheaply (or even get paid to do it) which they will never repay to speculate on ideas, many of which will never pan out. And who loses? The savers. Our parents and grandparents pay for this speculation – and later, so too will our children. Negative interest rates are a symptom of a very bad global economy, not a benefit to the economy. It’d be like calling a cast a benefit of a broken leg. It makes absolutely no sense. And these are the people calling the shots...

It’s crunch time in the Elevate offices. Jacob and I are in the final stages of preparation for the third and final level of the Chartered Financial Analyst® (CFA®) exam.

As the name implies, the Money Weighted Return weighs returns based on how much (or how little) money was in the account at the time the return was generated. What this means to the investor is simply – the MWR answers the question “how am I doing toward my goals?”. This is the number that you would use to gauge your position in relation to your long-term goals.

What’s in a number? If a picture is worth a thousand words can a number be worth an exponential amount of that thousand? Dare I answer with a resounding “yep!”.

Quarter one of 2019 is in the books. The markets got off to a great start this year, but most of the return came in the first 2 months.

Even when an analysis is based on fraudulent financial reports - the trailing stop is the investors last line of defense.

The Fed deciding not to increase rates, and instead to “be patient” is another way of saying they have zero confidence in our economy’s ability to handle rates at even 3% for 10 years – which is incredibly bearish.

It’s so bearish that the market loves it. The market loves easy money. Many market participants (and people in general) fail to look at the second order effects and instead focus only on the first order effects of a decision.

In February, markets continued to power higher with the S&P 500 Index (SPX) up 2.97% bringing the year-to-date return to 11.08% through the end of the month. At this rate – the market should be up 66.48% this year, right? I think this is an unlikely outcome but it sure is fun to extrapolate.