The tax-free municipal bond market has staged one of the best comebacks since Lazarus over the past month. We have seen a dramatic improvement in the market, with bond yields dropping substantially across the entire curve. The graph below shows the AA municipal yield curves on 10/19 and 11/16…

We’re sending this on the Sunday bookended by the week that celebrated America’s veterans and the week of the traditional American gathering of Thanksgiving. We wish all readers goodwill and safety in their travels.   Let’s take a deep breath and tackle the volatility in financial markets caused…

“When things change, I change” is a shorter version of the famous quote widely attributed to John Maynard Keynes. “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” has thousands of attributions to Keynes, but I cannot find one source of the original quote.

Cumberland has utilized separately managed accounts (SMAs) to execute its fixed-income strategy since the company’s inception in 1973, long before SMAs were popularized in the early 2000s. The reasons for managing money in this fashion are the same today as they were then:  

My friend Lyric Hughes Hale opened her recent missive with this thought provoking paragraph:

To no one’s surprise, the FOMC held its target rate for the federal funds rate constant at 5.25% to 5.5%. The main story emerged in the post-meeting press conference, where a wide range of issues were discussed. The first question set the stage for the main takeaway from the meeting.

 Summary

I will start this Sunday’s commentary with an excerpt from an exchange I had with a seasoned Washington insider:

The third quarter of the year was certainly eventful. The US government almost shut down twice and the US government bond rating was downgraded by Fitch to below AAA, emphasizing governance issues. Fed members continued to signal higher-for-longer rates, raising fears of a recession. Strikes…