News & Insights

Resources on Trusts, Investments, Estate Planning, Financial Issues, and Living Well

In just under two months, stock prices worldwide have plummeted from historic highs to bear market lows and have rocketed part way back up again. The coronavirus has infected nearly 2 million people, killing over 100,000, and shut down vast swaths of the world economy. In less than one month, our way of life has [...]
In our January Commentary, we noted that the Fed had dropped short-term interest rates in late-2019 in three distinct quarter point increments to the year-end level of 1.50-1.75%. As the coronavirus spread around the world in early-2020, the central bank cut interest rates on March 3 by half a percentage point, its biggest single cut [...]
Many retirees are worried about taking a required minimum distribution (RMD) in a down market and uncertain times. On March 27, 2020, President Trump signed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act into law, which alleviates this worry by suspending RMDs for 2020. Congress’s aim in suspending RMDs was to provide relief to [...]
Readers of our reports over the past few years know that we have described the condition facing investors as a bet. Older market veterans who have lived through a number of market cycles would tend to bet on what has always ultimately played out-- that the equity markets would eventually revert to their historically normal [...]
In my 52 years in the investment industry, I have never seen anything like the stock market activity of the last month. From its Feb 12 all-time high, the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined by more than 35% (about 10,500 points) to its Wednesday low, just below 19,000. That significant decline was the fastest in [...]
On Sunday evening of this week, the markets experienced a brief dip into negative yields for the 3-month US Treasury bill. Once again on Wednesday, bills with maturities from four weeks to three months were slightly negative. In other words, investors were willing to pay the US Treasury to hold their money for the next [...]
Customers may wonder how their assets held in trust departments are safeguarded. Here is a brief explanation of how extensive regulation, examination, and sound practices protect a trust company customer’s interests. Who supervises Mission Management & Trust Co.? Trust companies often act as both custodian and investment manager of client assets. Institutions that offer these [...]
As we head into the decade of the twenties, welcome to the casino! You can double your money on red or black, or you can lose it all. Never in the lifetimes of people living today have speculators faced the alternative of investments so ripe with positive potential while simultaneously saturated with the risk of [...]
In honor of Mission's 25th Anniversary year, Bill Nordbrock, contributor to the Arizona Daily Star spoke with Carmen Bermúdez, Mission's Chairman and CEO, to get her insights into the things that have made Mission Management & Trust a successful, enduring enterprise. His first article from the interview, published in July of 2019, talks about the [...]