Should Fund Managers Be Expected To Outrun The Bulls?
May 1, 1998So the stock market barreled along to new records in the first quarter of the year. Big deal. You, the investor, want to know how your money manager performed. Did he beat the market? Should you expect him to? The very phrase “beat the market” implies that there is a competition. Most managers, I’d guess, are competitive folks. They do not like to admit that they come off second best …
New Services Point Toward The Future
May 1, 1998This issue’s lead story about the future – or lack thereof – of the U.S. gift and estate tax illustrates our firm’s philosophy of financial planning: We do it today, but we live it tomorrow. Planning works best when we see our own goals in the larger context of the future. Our drive to confront tomorrow’s challenges is what led us to launch three major new service lines this year. …
Is This The Beginning Of The End?
May 1, 1998Here are some odds you can’t find in Las Vegas: There is a better-than-even chance, in my opinion, that U.S. estate and gift taxes will be repealed by the year 2010. Not just eased, as under last year’s tax law, but completely wiped out. The foundation for repeal has already been laid, partly by the 1997 legislation but more so by changes in the economy, by public attitudes toward wealth …
Coping With Good Times
August 1, 1997To those of us who came of age between the eras of Vietnam and David Stockman, economic doom has always lurked just around the corner. LBJ’s guns-and-butter inflation, Nixon’s price controls, Ford’s WIN buttons, Carter’s sky-high interest rates and Reagan’s soaring deficits blend together, a seamless memory of bad news. As the saying went, “Been down so long, it looks like up to me.” Despite some best-selling books predicting its …
Wrong Turn Is Often Fatal In Computer Business
August 1, 1997The phenomenal pace of change in the computer industry creates a business environment as unforgiving as the Sierra Nevada was to 19th-Century emigrants. Getting lost for even a little while can put a company at grave risk of a lingering, unpleasant death. Apple Computer Inc. is the latest to demonstrate this principle, and it was evident well before the ouster earlier this summer of Gilbert Amelio as the company’s third …
How Now, Sacred Cow? Tax Rules To Beef About
August 1, 1997Finding goofy rules in the tax code is a game everyone can play. Sure, there are plenty of ways the government sticks it to unwary taxpayers. We listed some in our last issue (“Ten Tax Rules Guaranteed to Drive You Crazy“, Sentinel May 1997). But lots of other provisions let taxpayers with the right political demographics off the hook when broader policy needs might argue otherwise. Is it fair to …
Ten Tax Rules Guaranteed to Drive You Crazy
May 1, 1997Tax professionals are just about the only Americans who do not complain about the complexity of our tax laws. After all, if mere commoners could find their fiscal fortunes in the Internal Revenue Code, how would oracles like us ever command $400 an hour? No, it is not complexity that rankles. Writing tax law is an art that requires Congress to balance the needs of the Treasury, the condition of …
Promise And Problems In The Third World
May 1, 1997SÃO PAULO, Brazil — A vast rolling prairie, bright green except for hints of morning mist in the hollows, unfolds as my Varig flight heads southward over Brazil’s Minas Gerais state. It is a familiar and comfortable landscape, one that could pass for the Flint Hills of Kansas in springtime. But it is not springtime in Brazil. I arrive in late February, near the end of the Brazilian summer. At …
Work-around Beats Futzing Around
May 1, 1997When America Online went off-line a few months ago, I felt only a drop of sympathy for all the small business owners who howled. I just cannot feel too sorry for a guy who complains “I lost $25,000 in sales because I couldn’t check my e-mail!” If it’s worth $25,000 to you, why not have a backup? How about an account with CompuServe (unless AOL completes the rumored buyout), Microsoft …
Position Yourself For Tax Changes
May 1, 1997Affluent taxpayers are likely to see some of the best tax-planning opportunities in years under the balanced budget accord that was reached by White House and Congressional negotiators this month. In some cases the deal will take us back to the future by reviving estate and income tax strategies that have been in the deep freeze since the late 1980s. While details of the tax law changes are still uncertain, …
