Daily Commentary

MarketMinder’s View: There is a big component missing from this retirement planning piece. It argues arbitrarily targeting a certain portfolio size at retirement is misguided, which we agree with, but then bizarrely claims everyone should target a portfolio income level. Not cash flow, which can come from a variety of sources, but income via bond interest or annuities. We think this is wrongheaded and short-sighted. It assumes your time horizon ends at retirement, ignoring (and even dismissing) the need to earn returns to guard against prematurely depleting your assets even if cash flow is your primary goal. Your time horizon is the entire length of time your money must work toward your goals, and includes the years you take cash flows. It also assumes cash flow comes only from portfolio income, which would force you into perpetually lower-returning assets, which can increase the risk of depletion (and don’t even get us started on deferred annuities, which are rotten to the core). The root error here, which is implied if not expressed outright, is that you can’t touch your principal in retirement. But that is what it is there for! If you allow yourself this, you open yourself to the magic of homegrown dividends, whereby you can fund living expenses by harvesting your returns on stocks. Those returns will help guard against inflation (a risk even to annuities one has turned into a stream of payments, since they often aren’t inflation-adjusted) and running down your savings too quickly. As your time horizon shortens or if you aren’t comfortable with the ups and downs of an all-stock portfolio, you may find it beneficial to blend in more fixed income to lower your portfolio’s expected volatility. But these avenues open to you only if you think big-picture, asking three simple questions: What are my goals? How long do these goals last? And, what returns will I need over time to reach them?

MarketMinder’s View: With this year’s Middle East hostilities, many see the global economic outlook darkening, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF). “The IMF now expects the global economy to expand by a sluggish 3% in 2026, down from 3.5% last year and from the 3.1% it had forecast for this year back in April. The fund expects worldwide growth to rebound to 3.4% next year.” While the supranational organization’s prognostications garner headlines, treat them like all others’—as one opinion among many. Tweaks to their earlier projections highlight forecasting’s general unpredictability—and how much things hinge on changing assumptions, e.g., “The IMF forecasts assume that the Strait of Hormuz reopens later this month—even though U.S. strikes on Iran resumed and President Donald Trump declared Wednesday that a ceasefire with Iran was over. They also assume that commerce through the strait returns to normal by next March.” Ok, but that doesn’t say anything about businesses’ adaptation to the Strait of Hormuz’s closure and energy markets recovering from the initial shock well before the latest attempted ceasefire. The global economy and markets have already shown they don’t require pinpoint timing in the Persian Gulf. What matters for markets is how reality squares with prevailing sentiment. To the degree the IMF’s cautious outlook reflects widespread moods, that suggests a low expectations bar for growth to clear and positively surprise. For the latest regarding the regional conflict, please see today’s commentary, “On the Iran Flare Up.”

MarketMinder’s View: While there isn’t a direct investment takeaway here, we think the argument is worth exploring given politicians, economists and other experts’ obsession with “productivity.” Conceptually, productivity is easy to understand: Do more with less. Economists say this is key to economic growth, rising living standards—and increasing wealth—since at least the Industrial Revolution. But as this piece points out, it can be devilishly hard to measure in practice. “Trouble is, in measuring GDP, you left out a lot of things you couldn’t measure. Such as? What economists used to call ‘land’. Today we call it ‘the natural environment’. When you use natural resources but don’t count them, you’re counting them as though they were adding to productivity, not depleting resources. [Deloitte Access Economics Partner John] O’Mahony says Kuwait is not twice as productive as the United States, it’s just sitting on a lot of oil. ... Then we’ve got GDP’s limited ability to capture improvements in the non-market sectors of the economy such as health and education. Patients and students benefit from advances in medical science and learning, but this doesn’t show up in GDP because it’s been too hard to measure.” As the article astutely notes, productivity measures themselves could use some productive improvements. For investors, we think the takeaway is to not take economic reports and statistics unquestionably as gospel. Examine their construction and underlying components to understand what they do (and don’t) show. Dig a little, and you might find they aren’t worth your time, saving yourself the trouble—and perhaps improving your productivity.