Weekly Commentary

Higher Gas Prices-Who’s the loser? Tim Phillips – CEO, Phillips & Company A few weeks ago we mentioned how we had already seen some GDP forecasts revised down to 2.97% from highs in February of 3.20% Either all of these guys aren’t very good at accurately forecasting the size of the world’s largest economy 12 […]

Painful Start or Painful Taxes Tim Phillips, CEO – Phillips and Company Last quarter, when we were in the thick of earnings season we noted how well the numbers were looking at the top line and bottom line. When all was said and done, Bloomberg’s numbers showed that 72% of the S&P 500 beat earnings […]

Political Drama – Enter Stage Left & Right Tim Phillips, CEO – Phillips and Company In, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes laid out six objective factors that influence the propensity to consume. I would like to take a moment to focus on two of them that are pretty straight […]

Jobs – Now What? According to the BLS data for March employment increased by 216,000 and the unemployment rate dropped to a 2 year low of 8.8%. They also revised up the January and February employment numbers. So for the first three months of the year the economy has added 188,000 private payroll jobs per […]

Climbing the “Wall of Worry” – What Is That? World events once again dominated the headlines last week:   Japanese nuclear issues Unrest in the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA), specifically Libya and Syria The European Debt Crisis, specifically Portugal, Ireland and Greece   Certainly, the equity markets overcame some serious headlines this week […]

The World Is Falling Apart Again Last week’s blog made a fairly easy prediction for rough market conditions and extreme volatility. As usual, the human predictive ability is limited, and that applies to me. Who could foretell a nuclear disaster on top of a brutal dictator dominating our headlines? The markets were very extreme, especially […]

Advancing Philanthropy- Chronicles of Philanthropy Advancing Philanthropy – One for All and All for Nothing

Does it Really Matter? How do you write about Japan and its economy when the death toll from the earthquake and tsunami is expected to exceed 10,000? After all, nothing really matters like life, liberty and family. My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Japan. Given my profession though, I cannot simply dodge […]

What Gets Us into Trouble as Investors Is What Keeps Us Alive As Humans Inductive reasoning is one of the many thought processes we use today to make decisions and has helped us survive throughout our history. It’s our ability to make judgments (or should I say “educated guesses”) based upon past experiences. For example: […]

  Sesame Street takes on the Federal Budget   It has finally gotten to me. I have seen and heard so much about budget cutting and deficits and I suspect you have too. What’s the big deal about all of this and what is the possible impact on our markets and investments?   The proposals […]