Posted: July 11, 2025 | by: Thomas F. McKeon, CFA
In this issue: Review and Outlook, Model Portfolio Updates, CSCM 15th Birthday, Revisiting the Humble Buy-Write, Phoenixville Best Small Town in the U.S, Getting the Best of It and much more.
The U.S. large cap and many Developed Markets stocks closed the 2Q-2025 at an all-time high, despite the myriad uncertainties and inconstancies of the current administration’s economic policies. We’ll take it. Our mission on behalf of our clients is to take whatever the markets give us.
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The equity markets reacted negatively early in 2Q-2025 as the across the board tariffs were announced. They reversed course when the administration back-tracked on the tariffs and the equity markets (largely US and Global Large Caps) surged to new highs by the end of the quarter.
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As our application to be Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) was approved by the Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities on June 30, 2010 we just reached our 15th anniversary. We’re happy to be here and happy to be helping our clients achieve their desired investment outcomes.
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In 2Q-2025, the equity markets surged to new all-time highs and most provided total returns that would be equal to a good year’s total return. What these graphs don’t show is a risk metric. But intuitively and empirically, higher return model portfolios exhibit the greatest risk, as measured by price volatility. Accordingly, the graph also reveals that lower risk portfolios come with a price--lower average returns.
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In any well-allocated portfolio and in any given time period, some market exposures will be doing better than others. That is the point of allocation--to get an aggregate return with minimal risk. Combining market exposures that are not perfectly correlated reduces risk.
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Believe it or not our little hometown of Phoenixville has been named the Best Small Town in the U.S. by Travel & Leisure Magazine in June. When we bought a lot in 1985 and built a house, Phoenixville was indeed a gritty, rough around the edges former steel town. Since then it has risen--dare I say--like the proverbial Phoenix into a marvelous small town, and it is still getting better. The magazine says it best.
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Most of our portfolios hold a position in the Blackrock Core Bond Trust (BHK) - a closed end bond fund with an attractive yield of more than 9% They recently had a rights offering whereby every shareholder was granted rights to purchase additional shares at a discount. We exercised those rights on behalf of our clients and in June our portfolios bought those additional shares at a 5% discount to the recent 5-day average closing price.
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Local Advisor gets 8 years in prison for stealing client assets.
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We picked up a book in the late 1990s titled “Getting the Best of It” by David Sklansky. It is a book aimed at serious card players-gamblers with the intention of arming them with the best understanding of odds, chance and conditional probabilities so players can get the best of it.
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The Financial Times recently reported that private equity has underperformed the S&P 500 index over all time period over the past decade.
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Olivia Rodrigo covers the Cure’s hit “Just Like Heaven” with Cure front-man Robert Smith at the Glastonbury festival this summer.
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Coming Soon...