Jason Blackwell, CFA, CAIA^®

A 2019 study by the National Academy of Sciences confirms the widely held belief that humans are drawn to negative news. Results from a 17-country, 6-continent study showed that modulating the tone of a video to be more negative increased attentiveness and arousal. The lesson here is clear, if...

Plan sponsors often struggle to develop an investment plan that meets the diverse needs of their plan participants while fulfilling the requirements of their fiduciary duties. This white paper is a guide to optimize your retirement plan for participant success....

It may surprise you that the deepest recession in modern history has not hit Main Street, yet. While this data glosses over the pain being felt by some households, total personal income is up nearly 6% since the end of 2019. That rise is despite a 32.9% annualized decline...

As schools shut down this spring, many students missed out on a lesson often taught in physical education classes: how to dance the box step. Forward-side-together; backward-side-together. Coming into June, equity markets and public policy makers had taken bold first steps forward and the economic data and COVID-19 data...

Despite a wild ride thus far in June, the S&P 500 Index is effectively flat for the month. After rising 6.2% through Monday (June 8th), which took the index into positive territory for the year, stocks sold off sharply over the next four days. It is tempting to blame...

In considering a recovery from the current crisis, our focus has been on relaxing (but not eliminating) social distancing measures, the impact of fiscal and monetary responses, and the likelihood that equity markets would move before the economy. This month we turn our attention to the longer-term implications. While...

Investment markets have spent the past few weeks consolidating its big bounce off the lows. We believe returns have stabilized, as evidenced by relatively measured daily price moves in the range of 1-2% versus the 5-10% gyrations we saw during mid-to-late March. This relative quiet comes as investors wait...

A number of memes have circulated over the last six weeks describing April as the longest month in history. We yearn for everyday occurrences like getting haircuts, enjoying a meal at a restaurant, and seeing our friends, clients, and coworkers in person. The markets too have moved at breakneck speed over the past couple of months. Indeed, we have had a more than 30% peak-to-trough decline in the markets followed by a 30%...

Oil was in the spotlight this week, and the news here was not positive. Oil futures contracts for May delivery settled in negative territory for the first time in history as storage capacity quickly fills up. The self-induced economic coma has dramatically reduced energy demand while oil producers have...

One of the most dangerous phases of a hurricane comes as the first half of the storm passes and the eye of the storm is overhead. The winds calm down, the sun comes out, and people are tempted to go outside into the clear of day. Over the last...

People are gripped with fear. We fear getting sick, losing our jobs, and watching our portfolios decline in value. That is a very understandable reaction to the crisis in which we currently find ourselves.  Professional investors channel that fear into analysis. They analyze everything from economic growth, corporate earnings, virus reproduction rates, virus mitigation...

At The Colony Group, we take a long-term perspective despite a shorter-term news cycle. During this period of higher uncertainty, we aim to provide more frequent market updates and give perspective on how the news of the day impacts longer-term expectations. With markets reacting to news breaking moment-by-moment, what...

For our most recent update on the COVID-19, please read: What A Week, Really This Time Equity markets opened sharply down again this morning following President Trump’s address to the nation. The President’s speech underwhelmed investors, who were hoping for a bolder, more substantial policy response. Instead, as one of our...

This week was another wild ride in the markets but we returned almost back to where we started. Virus Global cases have now topped 100,000 and we anticipate seeing additional increases. The CDC sent out 2,500 testing kits to health centers around the country (each kit can test approximately...

January 2020 started off well enough with both U.S. and Emerging Markets taking turns as the top performer among equities, both up ~3% year-to-date as of January 17th. Then, news broke that the U.S. was screening all passengers traveling from the city of Wuhan, the largest city in the...

By: Jason Blackwell, CFA, CAIA®, Chief Investment Strategist; Brian Katz, CFA, Chief Investment Officer; Richard Steinberg, CFA, Chief Market Strategist A review of October’s investment returns may cause you to believe that all of our worries went away – except that they didn’t. The so-called “Phase One” of a...

By: Jason Blackwell, CFA, CAIA®, Chief Investment Strategist; Brian Katz, CFA, Chief Investment Officer & Richard Steinberg, CFA, Chief Market Strategist Movies developed using technicolor appear highly saturated if viewed from afar. However, if you zoom in closely, you may notice that each individual pixel is represented by only...