Posts by CCR Investment Committee

If we can recognize within ourselves which biases have tended to define our investment approaches, then we are taking the first step toward improving our results already.

Greetings this New Year from our new office facilities in Westborough, MA. We hope you will find time to stop in if you are in the area!

For some, higher mortgage payments may soon become a reality.

Here at the mid-point of 2016 it’s worth noting the remarkable turn of events, both inside and outside of the financial world we professionals occupy.

In today’s hyper-connected world with media outlets “screaming” headlines to attract eyeballs, it is nearly impossible to separate fact from narrative.

The flaw in compartmentalized thinking for an investor is that we tend to place too much weight on the investment outcomes of a particular calendar year when it bears virtually no impact on long term investment results.
                                                                           –CCR Wealth Management Outlook, February 2015

Some clients may be required to adjust their own portfolio expectations & strategy in pursuit of the return required of their financial plan.

Investors are forced to choose between the boogey-man of actually rising interest rates, or the boogey-man of a 100% credit-bond portfolio.

As with most truly alternative investments, an investor must give up some liquidity to reap these benefits. 

US equity markets have seen what we would describe as mild volatility over the last few weeks, mostly attributed to geopolitical tensions emanating from the Ukraine-Russia belligerence. 

What are the similarities between 2013 and the late 1990’s? What are the differences that matter?  Are we in another equity bubble?

The stakes are too high to flirt with failure and ultimately default; party affiliation will not insulate anyone, all parties to the impasse know it (despite the rhetoric), and we must operate under these premises. 

Last year we were looking for US economic growth in the 2%-3% range, an improved investing environment here in the US as well as a stabilizing of non-US and particularly developing markets. 

In June we quoted Alexis de Toqueville with regard to the developed world’s attempt to come to grips with fiscal burdens of increasingly hefty magnitudes.

“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design”–Friedrich A. Hayek

We commented in January that “we expect the continued, gradual growth rate of the US (2%-3%) to support an ultimately improved investment climate domestically—but we are convinced we will remain in a low-return environment…” 

By now most of us have read our fill of 2011 post-mortems—but we’re compelled to add a few thoughts of our own before we look ahead, seeking to apply the experience and perspectives gained to our outlook on global markets in 2012.

This past quarter we’ve witnessed Europe’s fiscal issues finally metastasize into banking issues (Belgium’s Dexia)—long feared—as their politicians, like our own, have made an art form of “kicking the can down the road”.