investing Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

Not that long ago—say, when my parents were starting out in married life—building a sound investment portfolio was a piece of cake. You bought some Blue Chip stocks and some Triple A bonds and you were done. And even having to worry about building a portfolio was a very rare experience. The vast majority of …

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Creative Capital

Cash is King

by Greg Curtis

Since the end of the Financial Crisis eight long years ago, a notion has settled across the land that “cash is trash.” This is the bunkmate of the “TINA” principle: There Is No Alternative to owning equities. It’s easy to understand how these ideas took root. Since the Bear Market ended in early 2009 stocks …

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Money

Three Simple Questions on the Markets, Part III

by PQ Staff

We asked a group of the region’s leading wealth managers to pen a response to three questions about the markets and how they approach current conditions. Here are their responses to the final question: If you had to put all your money in one asset class today and couldn’t sell for ten years, what would …

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Money

Three Simple Questions on the Markets, Part II

by PQ Staff

We asked a group of the region’s leading wealth managers to pen a response to three questions about the markets and how they approach current conditions. Below are their answers to the second question: The Fed is working to “normalize” interest rates over the course of 2017. What impact will a more normal rate environment …

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Money

Three Simple Questions on the Markets, Part I

by PQ Staff

We asked a group of the region’s leading wealth managers to pen a response to three questions about the markets and how they approach current conditions. Here are their responses to the first question: Since the election of Donald Trump, stock markets have soared and the confidence of consumers and investors has risen. How real …

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Money

Three Simple Questions

by PQ Staff

Each year in our Summer issue, we ask a group of the region’s leading financial experts to help our readers by responding to a question. This year, we’ve asked three. The first batch of the questions and answers follow. Question 1: Since the election of Donald Trump, stock markets have soared and the confidence of …

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Creative Capital

Capital Preservation Paul, Part VII

by Greg Curtis

Well, the best-laid plans…I’d intended to interview the contestants in our little investment contest to get their take on the markets and on how well or badly they, personally, had navigated the various challenges those markets had offered. I was especially interested in what, if anything, the contestants had learned. But I was mainly thwarted. …

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Creative Capital

Capital Preservation Paul, Part VI

by Greg Curtis

Bull Markets and Bear Markets are such momentous events that they tend to fixate investor attention to the exclusion of more important matters. Most people, for example, would define a “market cycle” with reference to Bulls and Bears. Typically, investors might view a market cycle as extending from the peak of a Bull to the …

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Creative Capital

Capital Preservation Paul, Part V

by Greg Curtis

So far in our increasingly exciting investment contest, it’s been a positive experience all around. For the first three years the capital markets rose relentlessly: a modestly positive first year followed by two terrific Bull Market years. But things are about to change. Now, in Year 4 of our contest, the good times seem like …

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Creative Capital

Capital Preservation Paul, Part IV

by Greg Curtis

Last week we observed how our investment competitors fared as they navigated a boring, so-so market environment. But this week things get more interesting. As we will recall, Years 2 and 3 of our contest were Bull Market years. The equity markets were so strong that even highly diversified portfolios rose 15% in Year 2 …

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Money

Value Investing: Putting Time on Your Side

by Kim Forrest

“All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.” Throughout my 17 years watching markets and investing on behalf of high-net-worth individuals, families and organizations in the Pittsburgh area, I’ve never found this quote from legendary investor Benjamin Graham to be more appropriate. Investing is more than the cat and mouse game portrayed by …

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Creative Capital

Capital Preservation Paul, Part III

by Greg Curtis

Last week we asked Mr. Market to establish the playing field for our investment contest. This week we’ll check in to see how our contestants are faring. Year 1 of the contest, we will recall, was a so-so, boring year in the markets. Mr. Market’s portfolio—that is, a portfolio with exactly the same asset allocation …

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Creative Capital

Capital Preservation Paul, Part II

by Greg Curtis

On the last day of March, we launched our own, far more interesting version of March Madness, namely, an investment contest. Our contest features the Investing Final Four, that is, the four main kinds of investors I’ve encountered in a long and checkered career in the financial advisory business. But instead of competing for something …

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Creative Capital

Capital Preservation Paul

by Greg Curtis

I’ve been in the business of advising wealthy families for 40 years. (Actually, it’s been longer than that, but I’ve reached the age where everything gets rounded down.) Over all those years, almost every family I’ve worked with has followed an investment strategy focused on the preservation of their capital, and it’s not hard to …

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Creative Capital

Is Everything That Didn’t Work Worthless? Part IV

by Greg Curtis

We began this series of posts by examining the sorry state of value investing. We then moved on to making unfashionable arguments on behalf of hedge fund fees and performance. We’ll close the series by looking at the important role hedge funds—and, for that matter, value investing—play in the long-term success of investment portfolios. Hedge …

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Creative Capital

Is Everything That Didn’t Work Worthless? Part III

by Greg Curtis

We’re talking about nobody’s favorite subject, hedge funds. Last week we dispensed with the ugly topic of hedge fund fees, and this week we’ll take a deep breath and tackle the even more noxious topic of hedge fund performance. On the surface, the only way to describe recent hedge fund performance is “terrible.” Over the …

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Creative Capital

Is Everything That Didn’t Work Worthless? Part II

by Greg Curtis

In my last post, we discussed the sorry state of value investing following seven years of rigged markets courtesy of our central bankers. In this post we’ll turn to another category of investing that sits right near the top of so many investors’ Sh*t Lists: hedge funds. Whole books have been written about hedge funds, …

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Creative Capital

Is Everything That Didn’t Work Worthless?

by Greg Curtis

For reasons best known to themselves and their (not very robust) consciences, America’s central bankers concluded that the best way to drag the US economy out of the Financial Crisis was to make rich people richer and poor people poorer. They therefore adopted policies—QE1, QE2, QE3—that drove up the prices of assets mainly held by …

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Money

The Yield Dilemma

by PQ Staff

Editor’s Note: Each year in our summer issue, we ask a group of the region’s leading wealth managers to help our readers navigate financial waters by responding to a question. This year, the question is: Many investors are hungry for yield as the Federal Reserve has kept interest rates very low; what strategies can investors …

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