Commentary: The Perfect (though not necessarily soft) Landing

By Nancy Tengler, CEO & Chief Investment Officer

A little over a week ago, during a routine Tahoe hike, I executed a perfect face plant. It’s true. I landed on my nose which landed on a slab of granite. The doctor told me my nose served as an airbag protecting the rest of my face. Yes, the snout was broken—shattered may have been the word he used—but the eye sockets, my jaw, teeth—were all intact. They stitched me up, waited for the swelling to go down and on Friday he reset the bent beak and I am back in business.

Last week I learned a perfect landing is possible. If not somewhat painful. Will that be possible for the U.S economy?

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Commentary: Beware the Hastings Cutoff

By Nancy Tengler, CEO & Chief Investment Officer

Every school-age child in California studies the desperate and tragic story of the Donner Party. Death, cannibalism, and a risk-taking gambit to take a previously unknown and un-traveled cutoff known as the Hastings Cutoff to ostensibly reach California sooner marks the deadly and disastrous trip.

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Commentary: The Proverbial Tug of War Between Fear and Greed Continues

By Nancy Tengler, CEO & Chief Investment Officer

An undergraduate degree in psychology comes in handy when investing in the markets. Think of the stock market as an interminable struggle between fear and greed. Keeping one’s wits, understanding the effects of crowds moving into and out of ideas, the treachery of group think, and the erosive impact greed can have on total return is imperative to survival. Of all the attributes that can impact an investor’s total return, however, greed is by far the worst.

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Commentary: How To Make Sense Of The Columbo Economy — “Just One More Thing”

By Nancy Tengler, CEO & Chief Investment Officer

My mentor in this business was a brilliant, if somewhat quirky man. His office was a storage room for unread research and old copies of The Wall Street Journal. When the clutter became overwhelming, he moved out of his office—the only private one on the floor—to a desk in the bullpen. Usually, mine. This clearly seemed easier to him than sorting through the rubble.

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Tengler Report: Mr. Magoo’s Washington

Originally posted on July 14, 2021

Commentary by:
Nancy Tengler, Portfolio Manager and Chief Investment Officer

If I were pressed to come up with a suitable analogy for DC and the bureaucrats who dwell there, it wouldn’t be “Top Gun” or even “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” rather, it would be Mr. Magoo of 1950’s cartoon fame.

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The Tengler Report – June 30, 2021

“Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”

Bob Dylan, My Back Pages

Commentary by Nancy Tengler, Chief Investment Officer

Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but the older I get, the more I turn to the wisdom of the rock and roll lyrics of my youth.  Those of us who came of age during that long and dreary period of stagflation in the 1970s, grew up fast. Rock and roll lyrics reflected the melancholy of the times.  In the home of a single mother who worked two jobs to keep the lights on and keep food on the table, it wasn’t a question of whether to work, the question was how to work as much as possible. By the time I was sixteen I had a handful of regular jobs.

One Christmas, I was hired by two competing retail stores in my hometown of Walnut Creek, Calif., ­– “didn’t I just see you across the street?” asked one observant patron.  Those jobs were a bonus, so I accepted both and kept my fingers crossed the scheduling would work out (it didn’t).  I returned to cleaning houses, babysitting and pet sitting with a waitress gig on Saturday mornings.  There was no college fund, no clothing allowance, no car filled with gas. 

Ah, but I was so much older then.