RESEARCH & THOUGHT PIECES FROM OUR TEAM

Small businesses are bearing the brunt of supply-chain pressures and rising prices, with many tapping their cash reserves or taking on debt just to compete with larger rivals.

• Bloomberg: "How the Russian-Ukraine War Threatens the Dollar's Dominance"
• Visual Capitalist: "The 50 Minerals Critical t...

Rising Oil Prices Fuel Russian Aggression. What’s Next?

It’s tempting to blame Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on President Putin’s desire to rebuild an empire or at least elevate Russia’s geopolitical influence. We view the aggression as another example of how Russia’s behavior is linked to revenue f...

Meet the newly minted millionaires next door. They didn’t put all their money into a Microsoft-type stock that made them rich. They didn’t take a chance on speculating in cryptocurrency with its crazy volatility or start a business that they then sold to some billionaire.

• Visual Capitalist: "Rank...

Rochester, MI, February 22nd, 2022 -- Managed Asset Portfolios, LLC (MAP) has been awarded the Top Guns Manager of the Decade distinction for its U.S. Multi-Cap Value Strategy for the 10-year period ending Q4 2021, by Informa Financial Intelligence’s PSN manager database, North America’s longest run...

The average U.S. household is spending an additional $276 a month because of inflation that is rising at its fastest rate in 40 years, a new economic analysis showed. The squeeze stems from higher prices across a range of products and services, including cars, gasoline, furniture and groceries.

• T
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The latest monthly jobs report was much better than expected, but nonetheless finds employers across the U.S. still crying out in vain for workers. Goods are undelivered for want of truckers. Code is unwritten for want of coders. Hotel beds are unmade for want of bed makers, with both Hilton Worldwi...

The U.S. employment-cost index—a quarterly measure of wages and benefits paid by employers—showed that costs continued to rise at the highest rate in two decades. The fourth-quarter gain, compared with a year ago, was 4% on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department said Friday.

• The Wa
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Last year, China’s tech stocks cratered. This year, America’s are following suit. But their selloffs have very different drivers, and therein lies a potential inflection point in the emerging competition between the two countries. The Nasdaq correction is the natural consequence of speculative froth...

In the hierarchy of business threats confronting corporate leaders in 2022, Covid-19 still rules. But inflation has quickly closed the gap. Concerns about rising prices skyrocketed in the past year, according to a survey of more than 900 global CEOs conducted by the Conference Board, a business rese...

The Covid-19 pandemic threatened to ruin Americans’ finances. For many, the opposite happened. Though initial shutdowns caused unemployment to surge to levels not seen since the Great Depression, trillions of dollars in government stimulus and the economy’s swift, if turbulent, recovery helped many ...

It can be difficult now to remember what the U.S. economy looked like a year ago. The unemployment rate was 6.7 percent, with 10 million fewer people employed than before the pandemic. Expectations were that it could take years for the labor market to heal.

• Financial Times: "ESG Shares Underperfo...

Stocks marched higher during the fourth quarter as investors shrugged off mounting inflationary pressures, increasing prospects for higher interest rates next year, and a surge of new COVID-19 infections stemming from the fast-spreading Omicron variant. Investors applauded favorable corporate earnin...