Author Archives: Grace Rohrwasser

Tax Code Anomalies

September 2021 – By Bob Veres

Congress is getting ready to revise the U.S. tax code once again, and you can bet that the final version won’t be subtracting any pages from a document that now contains nearly 10,000 selections and two million words.  Over the past 10 years, alone, the tax code has been amended or revised over 4,000 times, with provisions covering pet moving expenses for people who lost their job, a deduction for clarinet lessons if it helps correct a child’s overbite, and a special carve-out for repairs for whaling boats—even though hunting whales is currently banned by the United States government.

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Government Bonds Around the World

Market Minute

September 2021 – By Bob Veres

There is absolutely no question that, from a historical standpoint, yields on U.S. government bonds are terrible.  10-year Treasuries that were issued at 1.25% a year are now yielding 1.297%, which is not terrific when the inflation rate is somewhere between 6% and 7%.  If you go shorter term, 5-year Treasuries are trading at a yield of 0.788% a year, and 2-year Treasuries are offering a somewhat less-than-generous yield of 0.215%.

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Tax Proposal Consequences

August 2021 – by Bob Veres

Despite the alarmist articles you might be reading in the press, most people won’t be affected very much, if at all, from the tax proposals that are percolating through Congress.  If the bills pass in their current form, then individuals who make less than $400,000 a year won’t see any increase in their ordinary income or capital gains rates, and husband and wife taxpayers with less than $7 million—or maybe $10 million—in net worth still won’t have to worry about paying federal estate taxes.

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Market Memo

August 23, 2021 – Daniel Zalipski, CFA®

Stock prices are influenced by several factors, both technical and fundamental.  Technical factors are commonly thought of as external factors that influence a stock’s price, such as liquidity or regulatory action.  Fundamental factors tend to focus on a company’s earnings and their valuation; the price investors are willing to pay for their claim of future earnings.  As we pass the mid-point of the quarter, it is time to check in on earnings and valuations within the broader market. 

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