Investment Strategies

The quiet windfall rule Wall Street actually follows isn’t glamorous: pros slow the process, not the money. When a client inherits real dollars during 2025’s AI-fueled whipsaws, the first move is to stop moving. Freeze decisions for a beat, map cash needs, and hard-cap your risk before buying anything with “AI” in the ticker or the story. Sounds boring. It’s how you keep the win. Why the pause? Because behavior eats spreadsheets. Morningstar’s 2024 Mind the Gap study shows the average investor lagged the funds they owned by about 1.7% per year over the prior decade due to poor timing…

What the pros do when the tape looks toppy When the tape feels toppy (like it has at points this summer ) pros don’t wait for a headline to tell them what to do. They use strength to do the boring stuff: trim crowded winners, rebalance, and refill the cash bucket before they need it. It’s not doom. It’s maintenance. And in 2025, with AI-heavy mega caps carrying a lot of the market’s mood, that maintenance matters. Here’s the blunt setup. Concentration is back near the highs. In 2024, S&P Dow Jones Indices showed the top 10 names were about…

Planning beats panic: AI stocks when the economy slows Planning beats panic. Every cycle. The investor who jots down a two-page playbook before the storm, trim some froth, add to the durable AI names, keep cash for ugly days, usually ends up compounding right through the mess. The investor who refreshes headlines every ten minutes? Sells winners into the hole and buys them back higher. I’ve done both in my 20+ years on the Street. One feels smarter in the moment; the other actually makes money. Here’s the frame for Q3 2025: stop trying to timestamp a recession. Time the…

What pros wish everyone knew about taking profits Quick question I keep getting this quarter: should I take profits in tech before a recession? The tricky part isn’t calling a recession; it’s sizing risk before it hurts. Pros don’t think in hero trades. They think in probabilities, base rates, and position sizes. Tech is cyclical and very sentiment‑driven, and in 2025 it’s still priced for strong AI/semis/cloud growth, great… until it isn’t. Your job isn’t to be a fortune teller. It’s to convert outsized gains into durable wealth without nuking future upside. Here’s the inconvenient math that informs that mindset:…

What pros wish you knew before moving a dollar If you just came into money, or you’re rethinking your portfolio because every headline says “recession watch”, here’s the thing pros say before moving a single dollar: protect your options first. Not the fancy options on a screen. Your life options. The ability to change your mind without paying through the nose in taxes or selling at the worst moment. That’s the frame. And it’s way less glamorous than chasing the “where-to-invest-inheritance-amid-recession-risk” keyword you just Googled, but it’s how real portfolio managers actually talk when the room gets quiet. Start with…

The big myth: tariffs + weak jobs crush everything (they don’t) Here’s the thing I wish someone had told me the first time tariff headlines smacked futures at 6:00 a.m.: equities don’t move as a monolith. They shuffle the deck. When tariffs rise and the labor market cools, the market doesn’t dump everything; it reprices cash flows. Some models hold up, some crack. Pricing power and where revenues come from matter a lot more than the scary chyron at the bottom of your screen. And yeah, I’ve learned that one the hard way, owning a low-margin importer during the 2018…

Old 60/40 vs. 2025’s higher-for-longer reality The old playbook was simple: the Fed cuts, duration rallies, cyclicals rip, and everyone high‑fives their asset allocation. This year, that script is… stickier. If policy rates stay elevated longer, remember, the fed funds target has sat at 5.25%-5.50% since July 2023, then discount rates don’t bail you out as fast, multiples don’t drift higher on autopilot, and financing costs keep nibbling (sometimes chomping) at free cash flow. Cash still pays you real money, 3‑month T‑bills have been north of 5% across most of 2024 and 2025, while parts of the equity market are…

Cash isn’t lazy, ignorance is: the myth that hurts you in a slowdown Cash isn’t lazy, ignorance is. The “cash is trash” meme works when hiring is booming and money is free. That was 2021. This year is different. In a softer job market, liquidity buys you time and options. That’s not market timing, it’s risk management. I’ve sat in enough investment committee rooms to know the fastest way to blow up a plan is to confuse bravery with prudence. Safety is a strategy, not a personality trait. Quick reality check. Hiring has cooled. The BLS Job Openings series peaked…