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Investing: Should You Buy What You Know?

Buying companies you know or whose products you use offers a persuasive sense of comfort to help combat the risk-taking involved in buying stocks. The strategy has even been touted by notoriously successful professional investors like Warren Buffett and Peter Lynch. Undoubtedly, many investors – including some of you reading this – have even made handsome profits buying the likes of Apple, Amazon, Google or Tesla in recent years. So is there something to this strategy? And if not, why does it seem to work?

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How the New Tax Law May Affect You

Last week congress passed the most comprehensive overhaul to the US tax code in decades. While the largest parts of that bill target large corporations (the drop in the corporate tax rate could save the six largest media conglomerates a combined $6 billion annually by one estimate), many of them will affect you directly.

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A Disrespectful Loyalty

I recently had the opportunity to watch all ten episodes of the brilliant Ken Burns’ documentary, “The Vietnam War.”  In episode nine, I was introduced to the phrase (which was the title of the episode) – “A Disrespectful Loyalty.”  Seeing the Vietnam War era footage of mass protests reminded me of the broad spectrum of local and national protests that have been building momentum since the presidential election about a year ago. And then this recent headline (October 28, 2017): Americans are facing the largest social and political crisis since the Vietnam War, according to new poll results

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The Case for the Long View

Long View thinking is invaluable at Singer Burke as tax and financial planners, portfolio managers, and investors in private companies.  We are constantly considering worst, best and middle-case scenarios for the economy, assets classes, business plans, and our clients’ income.  We then try to prepare for all of the above. 

I would suggest Scott Pruitt, the US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, needs to change course.  Despite his agency’s tens of thousands employees and multi-billion dollar budget, it is clear to me that he is not utilizing sufficient resources to consider the Long View, and I fear we will pay dearly for his short-sighted approach.

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Figuring Out Your FICO®

Your credit score is used to rate your risk as a borrower, and landlords, lenders and potential employers may look to your credit score as an indicator of financial responsibility. This can affect your ability to rent an apartment, the interest rate on your mortgage and even your career opportunities. As an example, the interest rate on a mortgage could be a full percentage point higher for someone in the lowest credit tier (550 and below) than for someone in the highest credit tier (750 and above). For a $400K mortgage this would result in more than $100K of additional interest over the life of a 30 year loan!

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Your Ballot vs. Your Wallet

Given the massive polarization between Republicans and Democrats, I have been thinking a lot about how our personal views on the environment, social issues, economics and therefore politics can affect our world-views and possibly derail a rational and disciplined long-term investment strategy.

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