Kathryn Stephany, JD

Inflation is running at 8.6%, and the Fed has been aggressively raising interest rates. It is now signaling that equally large rate hikes could be on the horizon as early as next month. The Fed’s dual mandate is to keep the economy at full employment while at the same time keeping inflation under control. During the time since the financial crisis of 2008, which includes the Covid-19 slowdown in 2020, the Fed’s primary focus has been on full employment (economic growth). Since 2008 we have witnessed massive government bailouts beginning with the TARP bailouts, to combat the financial crisis, and culminating with $4.6 trillion being spent through the CARES Act and other relief measures to combat the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. For more than a decade after the 2008 crisis, economic growth was stubbornly slow, and the pandemic did not help matters. For all the government’s efforts to grow the economy, real economic growth averaged a paltry 2.3% per year from mid-2009 through 2019, and actually contracted by 3.4% in 2020 before growing by 5.7% in 2021. Accommodative monetary policy in the form of quantitative easing, and accommodative fiscal policy in the form of government bailouts conspired to keep interest rates (the cost of borrowing money) low. Unsurprisingly, only because economic growth never really took off, inflation remained subdued. But much like waking up from a party that went on way too long, only to find silly-string on the furniture and a pizza spinning on the record player, what comes next may be sobering.

In 2017, Congress created the qualified opportunity zone (QOZ) program to encourage long-term investment in economically distressed communities by providing investors with three tax incentives to help drive private capital to lower-income areas throughout the country. Since then, the FactRight team of analysts has reviewed several qualified opportunity funds (QOFs) that focus on real estate development located in QOZs. Over the last year, we’ve received a number of questions from broker-dealers and RIAs regarding whether any changes to the QOZ program are on the horizon, and it looks like the answer might be yes.

An investment committee (IC) provides wealth management firms a formalized mechanism for improved due diligence, ongoing monitoring, and decision-making.  A good IC aligns organizational goals, roles, and processes and enhances accountability, clarity of purpose, and shared knowledge among the team.   

An interval fund is a subcategory of closed-end funds and is a Regulated Investment Company (RIC), which is subject to 1940 Act regulation. Shares of interval funds are not generally “redeemable,” which is why the funds are classified as closed-end rather than open-end funds. Interval funds are so named because they must offer to repurchase shares at pre-determined “periodic intervals.” Although interval funds are closed-end funds from a legal standpoint, they also have features that are usually related to open-end funds, which is why they are sometimes described as a hybrid.

Was it just me, or did our most recent conference in Scottsdale feel, dare I say it, almost normal? I mean, the sun was shining, the palms were swaying, and the beer burro was melting hearts.