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Trump 2.0 We usually try to think of a theme to frame our quarterly discussions about the markets and the economy.  This time around, nothing trumps Trump.  He won the election, and the Republicans control the House of Representatives and the Senate.  They have an opportunity to make sweeping changes, and the early signs are […]

Please, sir, I want some more. The Oliver Twist fans out there will probably recognize this line from the classic Charles Dickens novel.  Young Oliver requested some more gruel on his first day at the orphanage.  He didn’t get more; in fact, he got a nasty reprimand and was treated like an ingrate and a

The Three Rs Growing up, there was an expression that I heard often and never really paid close attention to.  The expression was that kids went to school to learn the three Rs – ‘reading, writing and rithmatic’.  I guess I never saw it written out, and for many years this just seemed like common

Hurry Up and Wait Towards the end of 2023, many economists and market watchers were expecting that the Federal Reserve would cut interest rates 4-6 times in 2024.  The Fed itself even projected that 2-3 rate cuts were likely, but consistently maintained that any changes to interest rates would be data dependent.  Many expected that

A Matter of Timing – Fifteen Years and Counting People love a good adage.  “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”  “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.”  “A penny saved is a penny earned.”  “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”  “Strike while the iron

Fed Fund Rates – A Historical Perspective It is probably not a shock to anyone that we are a little bit nerdy here at Bryant & Brannock.  We like math and numbers and statistics.  It is fascinating stuff.  Really.  So, it is no surprise then that we spent much of our day today poring over

A Year of Promise We are currently three weeks into 2023 and, so far, it seems to be carrying some of the positive momentum from the last quarter of 2022.  Last year as a whole was brutal, with losses in virtually every asset class, but we did start to see signs of life in the

Casting a Wide Net (and Coming Up Empty) At Bryant & Brannock, we are big believers in diversification.  We think it is the most effective and reliable tool we have to help mitigate the risks of investing.  We build our portfolios with a diverse set of asset classes and different sectors of the market specifically

Piling On When we were kids, we played a game…well, it wasn’t actually a game, it was just a thing we did, where someone would shout out “Dog Pile” and someone else would jump on the ground and then everyone else would start piling on top of them.  Laughing bodies stacked on top of laughing

Caution – Speed Bump Ahead Last year at this time we were reporting that the Fed had announced they intended to keep interest rates low through 2023.  It is a different story today.  The Fed has signaled that it could conceivably raise interest rates three or possibly four times this year.  Yikes!  That is quite the change.  The