Imagine your good fortune when checking portfolio balances and you notice that the value of a single stock holding in your portfolio has increased in value by more than an entire year of income! ‘Impossible!’ you say? Not so! At Carnegie, we have witnessed this happy situation more than once over the years.

We live in an age of amazing technological promise. One where machines and software programs are developing at an astonishing rate, and where the possibility of encountering real-life robots - like the fantasy versions from 1970’s TV shows and film, such as B-9 from “Lost in Space” or C3PO from “Star Wars” - doesn’t seem so other-worldly anymore.  Today companies as different as Google, General Motors and Tesla are vying to develop self-driving cars, and Virtually Reality, or “VR” for short, is for Real.   With self-driving cars literally just around the corner, perhaps it is time to consider the question: are you ready to hand over the keys to your car and trust your life to an Uber machine? 

The Federal Reserve has now held short-term interest rates at close to zero for over six full years.  Six years – that is 2,190 days, and counting!  It is no wonder that finding a reasonably safe way to earn a return on cash has become one of the biggest questions on investors’ minds. 

In fact, some of the most frequent questions I field these days are about this topic:

•        What should I do with my cash?
•        Do you think interest rates are going to go up soon? 
•        Why hold any cash at all in my portfolio?