The Long & Short of It - Our process for building productive portfolios

For the better part of two decades, these Blue Sheets have been our forum for commenting on developments in the global economy and in the securities markets which supply essential capital to businesses and governments. In the course of all that observing and commenting, we have learned a thing or two about the roguish independence of markets and the often tenuous relationship between economic realities and securities prices.

Over the years, experience has humbled us with her repeated instruction in the futility of short-term forecasting. At the same time, though, she has taught us the power of understanding long-term forces in both the economy and the stock & bond markets. While we do occasionally venture an opinion, say, that interest rates may be bottoming or that a business cycle seems long in the tooth, our serious decisions about the makeup of client portfolios emerge from our studied convictions about a few powerful long-term forces.