Cash Flow & Liquidity Matter
It’s January of 1973. I’m barely 12 years old, barely 5 feet tall and not close to being 100 lbs. It’s late at night; the entire city has been all but shut down for a month due to record snows and low temperatures. Every other kid attending Rolling Green Elementary is home watching TV, but […]
The Kids Are Not Alright
Financial markets have spent the first six months of the year climbing up a wall of worry, leaving most of us better off than we were on New Year’s Eve, but not everyone. Let’s spend a few minutes pondering one of the bricks in that wall. Unemployment rates among recent college graduates (college graduates aged […]
Q1 2025 – The Pre-Tariff Months
It’s Sunday, April 6th and Three Fountains, the office campus we’ve called home for the last five years, is all but empty. Only a few cars vie for the parking spots closest to the doors. Iowa Wealth Management’s new suite, just one building over from our old home, is oddly quiet. Due to printing deadlines, […]
Good Returns, Great Returns and No Santa Claus Rally
For most investors, 2024 turned out to be a good year. For some, a very good year, although I suspect historians will be most taken by details easily overlooked from this vantage point. Certainly, the results speak for themselves. The year started strongly buoyed by expectations of multiple interest rate cuts by the Fed. Early […]
A Discussion, Delayed
Driving into work today, I stopped for a school bus coming in the opposite direction and waited for two of the neighborhood kids to board. A family from my neighborhood has a nice little tradition the bus driver allows for: Dad waves first, then Mom and finally baby sister (about age 4 who clearly cherishes […]
Golden Lessons in Labor and Work
The day had been long and fruitful, but darkness would come in about an hour as I traveled west on Interstate 90. I had been traveling at the limit of the Minnesota Highway Patrol’s good humor for the last few hours with the hope of not having to travel flooded terrain in the dark, but I was […]
Mid-Year: A Few Thoughts About Risk
My neighbor’s house has flooded. Here on the shores of West Okoboji, the spring rains were heavy, but not terribly unusual. However, the rain continued all through June. The final storms were epic: six plus inches of rain overnight flooded the beach and powerful winds pushed the lake across my neighbor’s yard into their house. […]
Tax Time
Another tax season has come, and as I write this, is mostly gone. We stay busy this time of year helping clients run down tax documents, explaining tax documents and soliciting opinions from assorted CPAs about what should be done with these documents. Iowa Wealth Management is not a tax preparation business, and we are […]
State of the…
The hall took some time coming to order. Old friends saying hello, moving without hurrying to their places. The same seats every time, which made it easier to spot those choosing not to attend. The speaker waited for good order to be made by the slowly quieting assembly. After all, he had been here the […]
2023… Good Things Came To Those Who Waited
That ended well. Thank goodness. It was a year to be patient. Financial markets struggled to regain ground from the prior year’s losses for much of 2023, swooned in the fall and then came back to make (most) things right during the last quarter – at least for those who held their financial assets the […]