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"What do you think about this company - they're going public and I want in!" From time to time these calls come to my office. Questions regarding a company that is going public and for one reason or another, it's going to be the next best thing. Maybe it will. Then again, maybe it won't. When it com...

It's Friday; let's have a little fun. I've put together a list of common products. They are items that you might buy on any given day, or perhaps every day. Each item is listed with its price adjusted for inflation after 10 years and also 20 years. I have assumed an average rate of inflation of 3%,...

Responses were varied, from screams of joy to overwhelming relief as we delivered the news to clients - Kodak has resumed lump sum pension payments, effective immediately, for the remainder of 2013. Prior to yesterday, lump sum payments from Kodak's Retirement Income Plan, or KRIP had been restricte...

The only thing nice about August, 2013 was the weather. It was another month, like June, where both stocks and bonds were down. Everyone lost money. The worries from August can be boiled down to one reason: September. September promises to be eventful for four reasons: the Federal Reserve, the polit...

Prepare to be underwhelmed! With interest rates having risen substantially over the past few months, I wondered to myself if banks had similarly begun increasing the rates they are offering on CDs to customers. The answer can be found in a brief listing of CD's, culled from a search this morning:...

Last Friday Nasdaq halted trading for stocks listed on its exchange. The problem persisted for a few hours and caused a firestorm of news and complaints. I heard many people on TV and the internet take up the torch exclaiming how "The markets are broken," or "High-frequency trading is destroying the...

In my past career as a journalist I would constantly have to remind myself that just because I sat in a newsroom digesting the daily deluge of news, others were not. It was unfair to expect everyone to have the same knowledge of the day's happenings simply because I'd sat through three newscasts. Th...

I thought this was safe!?!? Recently, this has been a common reaction of folks opening their monthly statements to see drops in their account values, despite owning investments they believed to be safe. Yes, I am talking about bonds - and more specifically, the idea of what a "bond" is. Wanting t...

It has been the conversation piece du jour - the PGA Championship at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester this week. Whether at Wegman's, strolling down Park Ave, or conversing with clients in meetings, golf's final major is on the minds of many in our area. Play starts Thursday and culminates with th...

I find working with young investors to be an extremely rewarding part of my job. It's exciting when a person in their 20's comes in and tells me they are done with school, beginning their career and want to start saving right away. Often they have begun already. They are putting into their 401(k) th...