A Wrapper Is Not a Risk Reduction Strategy

by Brian Jacobs | Sep 25, 2026 | Blog, Investment Concepts

Plenty of bottled fruit smoothies carry as much sugar as a can of Coke, and does anybody drink a Coke at 8 am and feel good about it? The smoothie has a strawberry on the front and the word “natural” somewhere on the label, so it goes in the cart next to the eggs....

A Steady Allocation Is Not Always an Unmanaged One

by Brian Jacobs | Sep 9, 2026 | Blog, Investment Concepts

In 1975, a Philadelphia inventor named Garrett Brown mailed around a reel of shots that seemed impossible at the time. One of them followed his girlfriend up the seventy-two steps at the entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the remarkable thing about it was...

The Wealthy’s Tax Playbook Finally Gets a Retail Ticker

by Brian Jacobs | Aug 18, 2026 | Blog, Investment Concepts

Back in 1900, you didn’t take a great family picture so much as you had one painted. John Singer Sargent, a successful portrait painter at the time, charged ~$5,000 a portrait at a time when the average American earned about $450 a year. The fee bought months of...

What Is “Safe” Depends on When You Need the Money

by Brian Jacobs | Jul 21, 2026 | Blog, Investment Concepts

I rarely share other people’s charts in these posts. This one is too good not to share.   Chart source: Cullen Roche, Discipline Funds 07.15.2026   Ask most investors to rank assets by risk, and you will get the same answer.   1. Cash is safe 2. Bonds...

Return of Capital: The Good, the Bad, the Misunderstood

by Brian Jacobs | Jul 20, 2026 | Blog, Investment Concepts

Not every dollar an investment pays out is income. And not every dollar is taxed the same (or, in some cases, taxed at all). Return of capital (RoC) does not change what an investment earns. It changes when the tax bill arrives for an investor and what that bill looks...