What Is a Fee-Only Financial Advisor & Why Does it Matter?
By Jeffrey J. Brown, MD, MBA, CFA®, CFP® If you’ve spent any time researching financial advisors, you’ve probably come across the term...
Financial Planning and Investment Management For Physicians, By Physicians
SHEARWATER CAPITAL
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The 5 Financial Mistakes Physicians Make
By Jeffrey J. Brown, MD, MBA, CFA®, CFP® Physicians are often so focused on treating their patients, managing their practices, and...
The Shearwater Report, July 2021 Inflation: Hedging Your Bets
By Jeffrey J. Brown, MD, MBA, CFA®, CFP® Investors have been increasingly concerned about inflation recently, and with good cause. In...
How We Help Physicians Build Real Wealth
By Jeffrey J. Brown, MD, MBA, CFA®, CFP® Physicians spend their careers providing individualized care to their patients. Like their...
Portfolio Diversification
By Jeffrey J. Brown, MD, MBA, CFA®, CFP® Diversification is a popular investment strategy, and with good reason, as it is one of the...
Equity Premiums - A Baseball Analogy
By Jeffrey J. Brown, MD MBA CFA CFP® Investing can be analogous to baseball. The better team does not win every inning. In fact, good...
The Bear Market of 2020
A bear market is defined as a 20% drop from a recent high in the stock market. Most major stock markets in the U.S. and around the world...
Why Dimensional?
When Shearwater Capital was founded in 1999, most financial advisors were recommending actively managed funds with exorbitant annual...
History Lessons
A fundamental principle of financial economics is the idea that risk and return are inextricably linked. However, when it comes to...
Positive Expected Returns
“What’s the stock market going to do?” If you have read our past newsletters, you know that we are not market prognosticators. It is...
Market Complacency
Since 2012, the stock market has demonstrated below average volatility and positive returns, potentially lulling investors into a false...
Time Value of Money
The time value of money is the concept that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar next month, next year, or ten years from now. This...
Socially Responsible Investing
Socially responsible investing refers to an investment strategy that considers the potential impact of your investments on society in additi
Why Invest in Stocks?
Why do we invest in stocks? Stocks are risky. Why not just buy U.S. treasury bonds and get a guaranteed rate of return backed by the full...
How to Build Your Roth Assets: Part 2
We recommend building your retirement assets by contributing to three separate “buckets” of money: 1) traditional retirement accounts; 2)...
How to Build Your Roth Assets: Part 1
We recommend building your retirement assets by contributing to three separate “buckets” of money: 1) traditional retirement accounts; 2)...
The Randomness of Asset Class Returns
Academic research has shown that there is little predictability in asset class performance from one year to the next. To illustrate this...
Individual Bonds: Are They Really Better Than Bond Funds?
In constructing our client portfolios, we rely primarily on DFA funds, for both equity and fixed income securities. While most of our...
Advisor’s Alpha
Vanguard recently published a white paper on “advisor’s alpha,” in which they discuss and attempt to quantify the value an investment...
How Much to Save
Two of the most common questions people ask about retirement planning are, “How much should I save?” and “Am I on track with my...