Wealth Management
Last year I reported on actions the previous administration was taking to make Medicare Advantage plans less attractive to beneficiaries and the consequences of those actions. For example, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services set the reimbursement rates to insurers who sponsor Medicare Advantage plans at much lower levels than expected. CMS took other actions that made the plans less profitable than the insurers offering them expected and in some cases made them unprofitable. The result was that fewer Medicare Advantage plans were available for 2025. Advantage plans that covered 1.5 million beneficiaries in 2024 were eliminated for 2025.…
Berkshire Hathaway (BRK/A, BRK/B) reported earnings of $26.3 billion in the third quarter versus a loss of $12.8 billion in the same quarter of 2023. Operating earnings, which remove the distortion from market changes and better reflect the firm’s earnings power, fell by 6% for the quarter versus 2023. Providing an illustration of the value from share repurchases, per-share operating income for the year-to-date increased by 15% compared to 2023, while operating earnings grew by 14%. Warren Buffett leads Berkshire as CEO and Chairman with Greg Abel, Vice Chairman of Non-insurance, and Ajit Jain, Vice Chairman of Insurance. Berkshire’s most…
“It feels like this is the worst,” says Atlanta-based advisor Margaret Wright of Truist Financial. “But I remind clients that we’ve been here before. We just need to be that unemotional voice of reason—that’s a lot of the reason why people hire advisors.” Spuds Powell, a managing director at $65 billion RIA Kayne Anderson Rudnick in California prefers in person meetings with clients rather than phone calls and his calendar has been filled.“At times like these with heightened levels of nervousness, over-communication is really important,”says Powell. “I’ve always felt that my most important role is to serve as financial psychologist…
Within the S&P 500, 170 companies reported earnings last week, and 75% of S&P 500 firms reported better-than-expected earnings for the quarter. The pace of the third-quarter earnings season begins slow, but 102 S&P 500 companies are scheduled to report. The Magnificent 7, consisting of Microsoft (MSFT), Meta Platforms (META), Amazon.com (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), NVIDIA (NVDA), Alphabet (GOOGL), and Tesla (TSLA), featured heavily in last week’s earnings. Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple reported better-than-expected earnings. Tesla reported much better-than-expected earnings the previous week, and NVIDIA won’t report until late November. Because these companies are a critical driver of earnings…