The change in stance by the Federal Reserve from its announced plan in late December to continue hiking interest rates and reducing its balance sheet in 2019, to its early January announcement that it may have reached rate "normalization' alrea

Social Security - Will it be there when you are ready to retire?

Jul 12th, 2018 21m 1s

The Trustees of the Social Security Trust Fund recently released their report to Congress, and the picture isn't pretty. For the first time in 36 years, they will have to begin drawing down their reserves to pay all beneficiaries. Without signi

Stock Buybacks - Are They Good or Bad?

Jun 1st, 2018 14m 52s

In December, 2017 the government passed a new tax bill that lowered the corporate tax rate. One of the big benefits of this reduction touted by the administration was the ability of US companies to plow the savings into increasd capital spendin

Short Term Sentiment and Long Term Value

Apr 30th, 2018 20m

In today's podcast we examine the drivers of market direction in both the short and longer term time frames. Factors like earnings and economic growth, interest rate direction and valuation influence the patterns we see in the equity market ove

How to Handle the Increased Volatility

Apr 16th, 2018 13m 58s

For most of 2017, the equity markets seemed to be marching higher without much of any volatility. All that changed in early February, 2018, when the Dow recorded a decline of 1,175 points in a single trading day. Since that time, the investment

Planning for a Long Retirement

Apr 2nd, 2018 20m 53s

Improvements in medical care, more active lifestyles and healthier diets are providing the benefit of longer life expectancies. All this is great news, but along with living longer comes the reality that we may need to plan for much longer reti

Lessons to be Learned from the collapse of Bear Stearns

Mar 26th, 2018 35m 40s

The month of March marked 10 years since the collapse of Bear Stearns, the 5th largest investment bank in the financial system at the time. Though there were warning signs of impending trouble if you were looking for them, its ultimate demise h

What's Going on with the Yield Curve?

Mar 18th, 2018 31m 31s

In this episode Randy discusses the recent movements in interest rates as graphically expressed in the Yield Curve. He explains how rates have recently narrowed along the curve, what are the likely drivers of these changes, and what it means fo

What is Value Investing

Mar 11th, 2018 27m 53s

In this episode of Let's Talk Investing, Randy discusses the history behind the development of the Value Investing style, explores some of the variations in the philosophy that have evolved since its start, and details how the Value style is pr

Asset Allocation: What it is and Why You Should Care

Mar 5th, 2018 31m 29s

In this show, Randy shares his opinion of what is driving the continued volatility in the equity markets, the potential unintended risks to the economy and the investment cycle of the trade tariff's just announced by the administration, and pro

Developing a Core Set of Investing Beliefs

Feb 26th, 2018 21m 1s

In this inaugural episode of Let's Talk Investing, we discuss the importance of developing your own set of core values to guide your investing success. Just as its important to have a guiding set of moral values to steer you though the tough ti

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