As we enter our final quarter of the year, we are pleased to present our Third Quarter results ending September 30th, 2024.

We at the Plumb Funds are pleased to present our strong 2nd Quarter results for June 30th, 2024, as we continue to excel at the halfway point of this year.

The first quarter of 2024 proved awarding to equity investors in general, and specifically for shareholders of the Plumb Funds.

January 31, 2024 Dear Fellow Shareholders, As we reflect on the past year, we are pleased to share with you our performance highlights for the fourth quarter of 2023. Despite the challenges faced by the market in recent years, we are proud to report that our Plumb Balanced Fund has shown resilience and delivered stellar […]

June 30, 2023 Dear Fellow Shareholders, Performance: The stock and bond markets were mixed for the quarter ending June 30, 2023, with the broad stock market as measured by the S&P 500 advancing 8.74%, the MSCI EAFE (foreign stock market index) up 1.87%, and the Bloomberg Barclays Intermediate term government/corporate bond index declining 0.81%. Recall […]

Thomas G. Plumb, CFA Lead Fund Portfolio Manager President, CEO, Chairman March 31, 2023 Dear Fellow Shareholders, The Plumb Balanced Fund (PLBBX) for 1st quarter ending March 31st, 2023, finished up 8.33% and beat our blended benchmark by 2.39%. Our largest weighted Information Technology sector was up 31.53% vs the 18.92% Information Technology sector of […]

Well, 2022 is in the record books and what a year it was.

“History Does Not Repeat Itself, But It Rhymes” – quote attributed to Mark Twain

After a year of characterizing our rising inflation rates as “transitory” the Administration and the Federal Reserve (the Fed) indicated that their number one domestic priority was to reduce inflation towards its long-term goal of 2%.

As you would expect, war, inflation, supply chain disruptions, and Central Bank tightening, combined to set the stage for the worst world stock market quarter in two years (the start of the pandemic global shutdown in March of 2020).

The tumultuous 2021 has finally come to an end. Though the year was wracked with political infighting, pandemic closures, supply disruptions, inflation rearing its ugly head and rising interest rates, most major world stock market indices recorded meaningful advances.

The September quarter continued the uneven economic recovery in the United States and much of the world.

For the Plumb Balanced Fund (PLBBX) for the 2nd quarter ending June 30th, 2021, finished up 6.53% and beating our blended benchmark by a sizable total of 107 basis points. We feel confident in our positive progress after a poor relative first quarter.

The world lapped the anniversary of the initial pandemic breakout in the first quarter of 2021. We all recognize that in some ways the world will never be the same.

Stating the obvious, 2020 was an unusual year on many levels including the stock and bond markets.  One would intuitively think a deadly global pandemic would naturally result in poor S&P 500 market performance.

Despite the sell off in world equity markets in September, the third quarter was a very good quarter for stocks.  The S&P 500 advanced almost 9% while the MSCI EAFA International Index appreciated 6.25%.  Even the bond market reflected moderating interest rates and advanced 1.33%.  For the year-to-date these US stocks and bond indices have [...]

The stock market rebounded from its extremely depressed level in the quarter ending June 30th. The Dow Jones Industrial Average increase of 17.8%, S&P 500 provided a total return of 20.5% and NASDAQ, was up 30.6%. All recorded multi-decade quarterly records. The Wall Street Journal reports that this performance was not enough to offset the [...]

The March 31st quarter included unprecedented worldwide economic, health and investor turmoil. The Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered its worst start of a year in its 124-year history. This decline completely offset the strong stock market returns of the previous year, putting the S&P 500 back to the levels of December 2018. The pandemic put all the worlds’ national economies, macro and micro alike, on the same downward spiral.

CORONAVIRUS: Effects on the global markets

What are you anticipating over the next 12 months? Should investors be preparing for a downturn?

Despite tepid earnings growth for the average company in 2019, broad equity markets provided very attractive returns. To the casual observer, public company earning’s growth, GDP growth and stock prices appear to have decoupled. In 2018, the stock market declined despite significant earnings growth for the underlying major indices. In 2019, the stock market soared despite minimal growth in these underlying earnings.

The third calendar quarter of 2019 was generally positive for investors, but less so than the previous two quarters. Equity markets were mixed as the S&P 500 advanced 1.7% and the MSCI EAFE ex US index showed a decline of 2.5% for International equity markets.

Have you noticed that interest rates are very low and bond prices volatile?

Investing in the “new” economy. What’s driving the change?

Does international diversification really reduce risk?

Tom Plumb addresses the belief that over time value investing outperforms growth investing.

Tom Plumb discusses how technology is impacting the world we live in. Big data and the fourth industrial revolution are changing how everything is done.

We believe stocks are the best leading indicator for the economy, not the other way around. Valuations don’t cause or predict market corrections.

We believe that global healthcare innovation is one area with dynamic opportunities. There has been some tremendous advancement in this field, including new drugs, therapies, early detection, treatment, medical devices, information systems, and robotics, to name just a few.

We are pleased to report very favorable results for the Plumb Funds for both the quarter and the calendar year. World stock markets continued their advance in the fourth quarter of 2017.