Last week we bid farewell to Vicki Bandor Braun, who joined Monarch in 2019 as Chief Compliance Officer, as she is retiring.  She has been a treat and a joy to work with for 6 years.  We will miss not only her vast wisdom in the realm of compliance, but also her rich life experiences,

Fundamentals & Valuations As I look out the window on this chilly, Tuesday morning I cannot help but reflect on the beauty of nature. The snow is glistening under the early sunlight and the silence is profound, broken only by the distant chirping of a lone bird. The tree branches are dusted with snow, creating

Thank you to all our wonderful clients who regaled us with their presence at our winter seminar lunch on 12/10/24.  We have hosted this gathering in December every year going back a long time, and it’s always one of our favorite days of the year.  The mood is festive, the ballroom at the FWCC is

Do We Really Want to Stay Overweight U.S. Stocks? And you thought we would be writing about the election?  We place a high value on both our limbs and on the friendships that we have forged over years and decades with clients.  We do have plenty of data and plenty of opinions, but you really

Warm greetings to you from Fort Rain, where the yard is soggy but the grass is as green as green can be.  That’s probably not going to make it past the first round in a Greater Fort Wayne contest for a new city motto, but it’s no less true.  Last month was the rainiest April

Modern Times I:  Investing in a Changing World Change can present opportunity for the enterprising investor, but new ideas do not always make the transition from an inventor’s dream into something tangible.  Certain countries, for various reasons, do not provide suitable growing conditions.  America seems a particularly favorable (though not the only) incubator, judging by

Staying the Course Many people possess the intellect needed to analyze data, but far fewer are able to look more deeply into things and withstand the powerful influence of psychology. The biggest investing errors come not from factors that are informational or analytical, but from those that are psychological. -Howard Marks Human behavior is a