2025 - Off to a Rocky Start As the Trump Administration settles in (unsettles in?) we already see that the general theme is uncertainty as 'job 1 '. It's too early to fully know whether the factors that comprise this uncertainty will work out …
Beware Investment Themes Du Jur
A 2024 That Few Expected; 2025? 2024, though ending with a bit of a thud, was a strong year overall in the market. However, the strength was very narrowly focused and most stocks did not experience the same degree of tailwind. International, small …
The More Things Change, the More….
The Few, The Proud The U.S. Marines have a saying for recruits: ‘The few, the proud’. It is catchy and simple and fits who Marines are. The same expression applied to the stock market during the first half of 2024. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq …
Traveling Resa with Linda
All Aboard! Destination-Sweden! Travel Buddy-Linda! Most of you know (with Linda being the longest employee of CAM- 19 years and counting!) that she was born and raised in Sweden. Linda moved to the United States in 1996 and has called Ann Arbor her …
Beware Investment Themes Du Jour/Annee
And Then There Was One? 2023’s strong stock market returns were primarily fueled by the Magnificent Seven – Apple, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. If you didn’t hold a sizable amount of those seven stocks, you likely …
Human Nature & the Choices We Make
2024: Off and Running The 2024 stock market has gotten off to a strong start, keeping the momentum going from last year. However, some market indices exaggerated the story of the fortunes of the typical stock in Q1. That is because the Nasdaq …
2023: An Unexpected and Nice Surprise
Farewell Frothy 2023 2023 was an unusual year in the markets, even while recognizing that most years are at least somewhat unusual. After a tough 2022, stocks subtly, then notably, bounced back in 2023, with the ' Magnificent Seven' (Apple, …
Does Buffett Herd Goats?
Wall Street is Looking Behind Again At the end of 2022, after a tough year in both the stock and bond markets, many Wall Street observers claimed the ‘sixty-forty portfolio’ (60% stocks and 40% bonds) was dead. Yes, in 2022, that strategy didn’t …
Ice, Ice Ladies
You know how most people escape the winter by going someplace warm? Well, three of our employees reversed that trend and decided this past summer would be the perfect getaway for an Ice Adventure. Charlie, Kory, and Jess all headed to Iceland for a …
Journey with Jess
Meet Jessica Hoard or “Jess” as the CAM team calls her. Jess has a couple roles here at CAM. Jess first came on the scene by teaching Linda and Charlie Pilates (back in the day). Linda and Charlie suggested Brian should give Pilates a try and the …
All Isn’t What It Appears to Be!
A Very, Very Narrow Market 2023 to date has been the year of massive growth stocks such as Apple, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia and Netflix. It shows in the various index performances: while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up …
Who Turned On/Off the Lights?!
A Light Switch Change As we moved into 2023, it was like a light switch was flipped: what struggled last year suddenly rocketed upward. Netflix was up 20%, AirBNB up 30% and Tesla up 60%...in January alone! Why is it that a flip of the …
A Story with Kory (and Dinner Party)
Time to reintroduce you all to Kory Salagean, a leading lady in the Columbia story. Kory entered the scene in August of 2019. Since then, she has quickly transitioned to being a main character. Kory completed her Series 65 in 2020 and is a registered …
2022 vs 2023: Where We Are vs. Where We Are Going
Bye Bye 2022 Though most ‘experts’ predicted a good year for the markets, 2022 turned out to be one of the worst overall (including stocks and bonds) in 50 years. Are experts clueless? No, but it does confirm that no one can consistently predict …
Maybe A Different Perspective Is Useful
Who Are We Hearing From? 2022 has been the worst overall investment environment (including stocks, bonds, metals, etc.) in over 50 years. Investors have found very few places to hide. These are the investment periods that simply must be endured …
Brian is Back!
He didn’t actually leave but he is back as this quarter’s newsletter feature! As you may know, Brian Weisman founded Columbia Asset Management in 1997. What many of you may not know is that Brian is an avid gardener! He attributes this passion and …
Seriously Sarah
The title alliteration is a stretch…but seriously, our part-time remote employee, Sarah, worked with us in the office for a week! In this edition of our employee newsletter, Sarah reflects on all the things she enjoyed about being back as an …
Bear Market 2022
The Rough Start Continues The 2nd quarter of 2022 brought more and greater pain for investors as we hit the definition of a bear market – the stock market (S&P 500) being down 20% from its recent high, reached coincidentally right at the end …
We’re Not In 2021 Anymore
Off to a Rough Start After strong stock market returns in 2020 and 2021, it’s not terribly surprising to see the market struggling this year. That said, the reasons for the struggle are at least somewhat surprising: major inflation …
Grateful for this Group!
As many of you know, the Columbia Asset Management team is made up of a group of us that are passionate about the work we do. We’re more than happy to help our wonderful clients and we enjoy spending time with one another while getting the job done. …
2021 Was Surprising, What about 2022
Why the Market is Unpredictable Going into 2021, there were lots of clouds on the investment horizon: Covid was raging and the vaccine was only just rolling out, many people were still out of work and yet the market did not reflect these …
Chatting with Christen
It’s been over three years since we chatted with Christen. Since she was last interviewed for our employee newsletter, her family moved from California- where her husband completed his microsurgery fellowship at Stanford- to Carmel, Indiana. Her …
Big Is Getting Bigger and Is that a Storm or Just Some Clouds?!
Storm Clouds or Will It Pass Over? For quite a while, the stock market seemed to know only one direction since the dark days of March, 2020. Then September came along and the market promptly fell over 4.5% for the month. September and …
Big Is Getting Bigger and Is that a Storm or Just Some Clouds?!Read More
Is the Market Predictable? – Not Really, but Human Behavior Is
Human Behavior: Panic The Colonial Pipeline’s hack in May seemed to create gas shortages all along the eastern seaboard. It turns out, there was never a shortage. Instead, simply the possibility of a shortage created panic buying that ended up …
Is the Market Predictable? – Not Really, but Human Behavior IsRead More