How Withdrawal Rates Impact Your Portfolio in Retirement
August 26, 2025 – Many people spend years preparing for retirement by saving and investing, but planning shouldn’t stop once the paychecks do. Transitioning from earning income to withdrawing it from your portfolio is a major shift with a new set of risks and decisions. This period, known as the distribution phase, requires careful thought. […]
Investment Commentary – August 25, 2025
Executive Summary Rising corporate earnings and expectations of lower policy rates are positive for risk-asset markets. Many asset-market valuations are not appealing, but risk-on is likely to persist until earnings are challenged by a weakening economy, or long-term government bond yields potentially break out to the upside (price down/yield up) due to unanchored inflation expectations, increasing […]
Investment Commentary – August 18, 2025
Executive Summary The 2025 Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium will focus on “Labor Markets in Transition: Demographics, Productivity, and Macroeconomic Policy.” The symposium is scheduled for August 21-23. It’s an annual event hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, bringing together central bankers, policymakers, economists, and academics to discuss important economic issues and […]
Investment Commentary – August 11, 2025
Equities The S&P 500 returned +2.4% as markets focused on strong corporate earnings results and looked past the disappointing economic data from the previous week. Markets looked past several data points which may ordinarily have given it pause: a weak ISM Services print, rising yields due to weak auction demand for 10-year and 30-year treasuries, […]
July Recap: Reflecting on the YTD Market Volatility & Recovery
Monthly Market Summary Key Market Themes Trade De-Escalation Boosts Risk Appetite. July saw meaningful trade de-escalation as Washington reached separate agreements with Japan and the EU. The frameworks set tariffs at 15% on most exports, along with still-undefined additional investments in the U.S. The trade deals boosted risk appetite and helped the S&P 500 set […]
Investment Commentary – August 4, 2025
Executive Summary Last week, U.S. stocks were down and bonds up (price up / yield down). The S&P 500 outperformed the MSCI Emerging Markets and MSCI EAFE indices. As for fixed income, the 10 yr. Treasury yield fell 17 bp on the week to 4.21%. The best performing parts of the bond market were treasuries, […]
Investment Commentary – July 28, 2025
Executive Summary We believe the tariff situation represents more of a consumption tax that will be more similar to a one-time price adjustment than stoking runaway inflation expectations. We also believe that housing is an important component of inflation metrics, where home prices have been recently deflating across the country, and mortgage rates remain elevated. […]
Investment Commentary – July 21, 2025
Executive Summary Various key trends the Investment Office is monitoring U.S. financials sector earnings season kicked off last week strong. The MSCI EAFE Large Cap value index has nearly 37% weight to financials, which creates concentration risk. This week we have Eurozone and U.S. preliminary PMIs, more S&P500 earnings releases including Google and Tesla. […]
2025 Mid-Year Outlook
Chief Economist Jeanette Garretty and Chief Investment Officer Stuart Katz break down what happened in the first half of 2025 and provide their outlook for the remainder of the year.
Lessons from the ’90s: How AI Is Powering a New Investment Cycle
July 15, 2025 Technology spending is accelerating at the fastest pace in decades. Figure 1 shows investment in information processing equipment and software grew +14% year-over-year (YoY) in Q1 2025, the fastest pace since the late 1990s. During the dot-com era, investment in computers and software grew over +15% YoY before collapsing in the early […]
Investment Commentary – July 14, 2025
Executive Summary Last week, there was little difference in performance between large-caps and small-caps, while growth stocks held up modestly better than value. Investors have begun to follow airline earnings announcements as something of a bellwether of consumer strength. Delta Air Lines provided a supportive full-year 2025 earnings outlook—after withdrawing its guidance in the wake […]
Investment Commentary – July 7, 2025
Executive Summary Major U.S. stock indexes finished the holiday-shortened week higher. Smaller-cap indexes performed best, with the S&P MidCap 400 and Russell 2000 indexes climbing 2.85% and 3.52%, respectively, followed by the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which advanced 2.30%. The S&P 500 Index and Nasdaq Composite both closed at all-time highs for the second week […]