General Commentary By any measures Q4 2018 was the most turbulent, volatile and financially challenging period since 2011. From its peak in early October, to the lows in late December, the SP-500 Index declined a little over 20%. The damage was far more extensive for small/mid cap stocks, with declines approaching 30%. Further, the bond […]

General Commentary It has indeed been a busy quarter. On September 16th we announced the acquisition of Messner & Smith, a San Diego based investment management firm. For the past 34 years Messner & Smith has been investing client assets with a value driven philosophy very similar to Carmel Capital. The firm places a high […]

General Commentary After a turbulent first quarter the equity markets resumed their orderly weekly increases. Despite the growing threat of a large-scale trade war and increasing geopolitical uncertainty, the US equity markets continue to progress as if all is alright in the world. The large-scale tax reform that occurred in 2017 has now found its […]

General Commentary If you decided to sleep in really late after a New Year’s Eve party, and woke on March 31st, upon first glance it would appear the U.S. equity market had a fairly quiet first quarter with a benign return of -1%. Clearly this was not the case. The SP-500 started the year with […]

General Commentary I see trees of green, red roses too I see them bloom for me and you And I think to myself what a wonderful world I see skies of blue and clouds of white The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night And I think to myself what a wonderful world What a […]

The third quarter was quite active for us. We added two new equity positions, eliminated two existing positions, closed one real estate investment with another one scheduled to close in early November. We also added one new corporate fixed income position. While our equity performance continues to lag the broader market, we are very pleased […]

During the first half of the year we generated modestly positive performance across each of our investment strategies. We will discuss results for each strategy in detail later in this letter, but we are generally satisfied with performance this year despite underperforming the S&P 500 return of 9.3%. In an environment where asset valuations are […]

We are pleased to report continued positive performance across our strategies during the first quarter of the year. Before we dive into the details, we thought it would be worthwhile to review the competitive advantages of our investment strategy. While we have addressed this topic in previous quarterly letters, it seems particularly timely in-light-of the […]

We are pleased to report that during 2016 our Equity accounts returned 9.9% for the year compared to a positive 12.0% return for the S&P 500, and our Balanced accounts returned 11.0% compared to a positive 7.5% return for the benchmark (which is weighted 50% S&P 500 and 50% Barclays Aggregate Bond Index). Equity Review […]

The impact of abnormally low interest rates continues to be the overwhelming driving force in the market. As we discussed at length in last quarter’s letter, this new paradigm has the potential to cause irrational decision making and unintended consequences. One of the pernicious side effects of this ultra-low interest rate environment is the growing […]