TFC Quarterly Insights
Helpful perspectives
TFC Insights provides clients with news and views regarding developments in the marketplace. We encourage you to browse both our latest editions and our archive of back issues.
October 2011: Investing for the Long Term in Free-Market Economies (Is the Risk Worth the Pain?)
The quarter just ended and this year have been a difficult period for all—investors, money managers, anyone whose personal net worth is importantly tied to the equity markets.
July 2011: From Washington to Athens, Beijing, Tokyo, and Sacramento: Searching the Planet for Signs of Intelligent Life and Political Will
As the saying goes, all politics is local, but politics, of course, is also about economics (i.e., dividing "the pie"), power and perception. Democracy, as Churchill once said, is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried. Globally, as always, the political forces and conflicts at play are important factors in our assessment of the variables in the investment equation.
April 2011: Bernanke’s Stock Market Bubble (QE2’s Consequences)
The disconnect separating Main Street and Washington from Wall Street persists. However, despite a steady stream of crisis-driven discouraging geopolitical news, a further deteriorating domestic housing market, the apparent inability of our political class to face the inevitable, and the perception that rising inflation expectations are stirring once again, the world’s stock markets continue to maintain a certain sense of equilibrium.
January 2011: 2010: In the U.S., From Doom and Gloom to Rising Optimism - The Markets and the Voter Blow the Whistle
Before the Washington crowd takes too much credit for the "accomplishments" of the final two weeks of the lame duck 111th Congress, one should remember that it was the voter who finally broke the deadlock, showed the red card, and forced our political class out of its do-nothing torpor.
October 2010: That Uncomfortable Feeling Persists (And Probably Always Will)
In our August 31st interim e-mail commentary, "A Left-Brain Moment", we suggested that "excessive caution today could be a costly long-term (investment) strategy." In that message we listed six general reasons which led us to conclude that global equity markets were at least reasonably valued and bond prices vulnerable in a rising interest rate (i.e., increasingly inflationary) environment.
July 2010: The Crisis in Confidence: Politics, Economics, and Financial Market Prospects
In the end, individual and professional investors are attracted to equities because of the promise of participating in the earnings of growing corporations, be they domestic or internationally located.
April 2010: Climbing on a "Wall of Worry"
The health care debate is over. But little attention in the 2,600-page final bill was paid to real medical cost control.
January 2010: From the "Great Repression" to the "Great Stabilization*" (A Fragile Recovery Replaces Abject Panic)
A year ago global financial markets appeared locked in an irrational free-fall. Investor sentiment could only be characterized at best as an emotional funk.
October 2009: What Happened to the "Great Repression?"
In our early July quarterly letter to clients, we suggested that at the time, the evolving consensus was the U.S. economy was bottoming and market psychology seemed to have turned the corner.
July 2009: Deflation, Reflation, Moderate or Excessive Inflation?: Portfolio Strategy for the Lean Years Ahead
Ask any unrepentant expert, analyst, pundit, or TV talking-head on Wall Street's beat for an opinion on the economic outlook, and a flavor-of-the-month projection is always forthcoming.
April 2009: Where Are We Today? (Mileposts on the road to recovery)
Since its March 9th low, the U.S. stock market (as measured by the Standard and Poor's 500 Index) has rebounded nearly 25%, but remains 6% under its December 31, 2008 closing level and 45% below its October 2007 record high.
January 2009: Three Months That Shook the World
It goes without saying, the final quarter of 2008 will be characterized by historians as the worst global economic and financial market crisis since the Great Depression of the early 1930's.
October 2008: From Irrational Exuberance to Unbridled Avarice to Abject Panic: How did we get here from there?
When Tom Wolfe and others complete their fictional versions or historical accounts of how this worldwide convergence of trends (financial as well as psychological) merged to bring us today's credit and equity market meltdown, there will be more than enough blame to share amongst those who prospered from their genesis.
July 2008: Whither the Price of Oil?
Worldwide equity markets today are locked into a nasty, negative correlation with the price of oil.
April 2008: Avoiding Armageddon; After Nearly 100 Years, Bear Stearns Disappears
During the March 15-16th weekend, the Secretary of the Treasury, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank (FED), assorted Congressional worthies, and yes, untold numbers of lawyers, were crafting a solution to avoid the possible collapse of the world’s credit markets.
February 2008: The Cost of Repricing Risk in the Credit Markets (and who should pay?)
For most investors throughout the world, the year-to-date is off to an inauspicious start.
January 2008: A Good Year, A Difficult Year
"That-was-the-year-that-was" summaries abound today in the media; we leave punditry to the pundits.