Pillar Capital Blog

What is ransomware? It is malicious encryption software which gets installed on the computer system which is intended to prevent the systems from working correctly. Criminals install this software through hacking and sometimes through phishing emails - which unwary employees click on links or open attachments. The criminals that have created this software then extort the victim for payment (usually paid via cryptocurrency) for keys or passwords which decrypt the files and enable the system function properly. Sometimes even after payment the files remain encrypted and unusable.

Do you contribute to your church or another charity annually? Do you have an IRA? Are you 70.5 years or older? If the answer to all these questions is yes – please read the remainder of this article – because I will explain how you can save thousands of dollars in taxes in the future!

In twenty-six years of work as a financial advisor I have often been asked if we are near a peak. There probably were some “peaks” during that time – a peak prior to the dot.com bust in 2000, a peak prior to the 2008 global financial crisis and a peak prior to last year’s Covid-19 induced market sell-off. At the trough of each of those sell-off’s investors would likely have regretted that they “bought at the peak”, yet with the hindsight of decades there were no peaks – just momentary blips on the path to higher prices generated by global capitalism.

I wrote an article in February warning that public policy and a convergence of events would likely produce inflation after a forty-year dormancy. It now appears that the question is not if we have inflation but when it will be gone…

At the bottom of the great recession in the fall of 2008 and early spring of 2009 things looked bleak. Amazon - one of the brightest stars of our current rally along with it's FAANG+M companions (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google and Microsoft) was down over 60% from it's peak reached ten years earlier during the height of the dot-com boom. Similar stories could be told of the other FAANG+M companies which were publicly traded at the time...

This is the first time in my 25+ years as an investment advisor that I've written a newsletter or article about the boogeyman of past generations of retirees.