Family Office Articles

Every once in a while, a new company bursts on the scene and captures the imaginations—and the money—of millions of investors. Typically, that company is in a new category, like electric vehicles or online conferencing. These stocks often experience a rapid and very steep rise in price as investors pile in, and almost always then see a significant drop as the euphoria dissipates. This pattern triggers two very different but problematic behaviors in retail investors: FOMO when they buy and the Disposition Effect when they sell.

The Fed made news on September 17, announcing a half percent drop in the fed funds rate. Headline after headline proclaimed “the first rate cut in four years,” but we should remember that rates were at or very near zero until March of 2022, when it appeared that the pandemic-driven inflation had gotten out of hand. Between that March and July of 2023, the Fed raised rates 11 times. This latest rate cut signals that the Fed now perceives a recession to be a bigger threat than rising prices. Investors may wonder what the impact of fed rate changes may have on their portfolio, so with this blog, we seek to provide some historical perspective.

In the second quarter of this year, Berkshire Hathaway liquidated almost exactly half of its holdings in Apple, Inc., amounting to about 389 million shares. This action followed the sale of about 116 million shares, another 13%, in the first quarter. Apple’s share price began the year at about $185 and ended the second quarter at about $217, so Berkshire was selling into an up market, providing over half a billion shares of liquidity into a stock that traded about 63 million shares per day thus far this year. Warren Buffett has famously said that he’s fearful when others are greedy, but there may have been other reasons behind the decision to reduce exposure to Apple.

According to Wikipedia, the first recorded instance of “OK boomer” was in a Reddit comment on September 29th, 2009, almost 15 years ago. Younger Americans, like all the generations before them, need to form their own identities, and often, that means an outright rejection of the values and cultural norms of their parents and grandparents. This phenomenon is an example of a dialectical process in which the status quo produces its own contradictions. This natural tension can lead to a higher level of truth as the contradictions resolve themselves into progress.

It is said that when America sneezes, the world gets a cold. A good example of that happened on August 5th, when the Japanese benchmark stock index, the Nikkei 225, had its worst day ever following a disappointing U.S. jobs report. August 5th was a pretty rough day in the news overall: Hurricane Debby was about to slam Florida, Google lost its DOJ antitrust suit over search, stocks tumbled worldwide, including a loss of 3% in the S&P 500, and Iran was apparently ready to strike Israel in response to an assassination in Tehran. It was a four-bagger of political, financial, economic, and climatic disasters. Bogieman terms like “Black Monday” and “Black Swan” were tossed around. Perhaps worst of all, the dreaded “R word”—recession— reared its ugly head again.

Real estate prices operate very differently from stock prices. Stocks have several attributes that real estate does not: fungibility, meaning your share of ABC common stock is identical to mine; liquidity, with trades of listed stocks executed instantly; small capital commitments, relatively speaking; and utility, you can’t live in your stock portfolio. A family’s home is often its largest single asset and is often a key element in financial and retirement planning. So what are we to make of the current residential real estate market, with its confusing and even confounding signals?

In his remarkable book “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,” Charles Mackay explored the phenomenon of crowd psychology by examining a number of examples of mass hysteria, including the South Sea Bubble, the Mississippi Scheme, and Tulip Mania speculations. Published in 1841, the book remains a must-read for investors because while the mechanisms and liquidity of investing may have undergone spectacular changes, the people doing the investing haven’t really changed at all. What was once called a delusion is now referred to as a bias, or by less fancy street terms, like FOMO. Mackay knew then what we’d be wise to know now: following the crowd can lead to ruin.

Few things affect economic growth and overall prosperity more than interest rates. Low rates create incentives for risk-taking, while high rates act as a brake on economic growth. Interest rates are the principal tool of the Fed, whose mandate is to promote maximum employment and stable prices. Rates do more than heat up or cool down GDP growth; they can cause bubbles to inflate or burst, threaten the stability of our national financial system, imperil the safety net, reduce the value of the dollar, and lead to social unrest. We thought it would be useful to put today’s interest rate environment in perspective by looking at the history of interest rates since the Kennedy administration.

If you grew up in the Western world, you’re probably familiar with the folktale of Henny Penny, which in America we call Chicken Little. Versions of this allegory go back as far as 25 centuries. When a falling acorn hits a chicken on the head, she mistakenly believes the sky is falling and sets off a panic among the other animals, which leads to disaster. As we move into the summer months and as the national election heats up, there will be no shortage of acorns falling—in the form of predictions of doom. The wise investor will recognize falling acorns for what they are, a natural phenomenon that’s just a part of life, and maintain their composure while those around them are losing their heads.