I’d like to start this article by wishing all of you a very happy 2023! Hopefully, it will prove to be more rewarding from an investment standpoint than the exceedingly disappointing 2022. Also disappointing is the recent, January 3rd, policy change by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that allows pharmacies to sell mifepristone. What…
There is a commonly held belief that Christmas, besides celebrating the birth of our Lord, brings what is known as a Santa Claus rally in the stock market. Since we’re approaching that time of year, I thought it might be interesting to delve into the numbers and see if this perception is truly fact or…
We’ve talked in earlier articles about the Socially Responsible Investment Guidelines of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). In that 26-page document, the bishops enumerate a number of business activities that make a company unfit for investment. The investment activities that the USCCB identify as unfit for investment include, but are not limited…
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops published the first version of Socially Responsible Investment Guidelines in 1986. Last November (2021) saw the latest update. From the beginning, the bishops have wanted to earn a reasonable rate of return and invest based on Catholic moral principles. A reasonable rate of return is one that matches the…
I began transforming into a Catholic investor while working as a portfolio manager for Northwestern Mutual Life. I had been a pro-life Catholic for a long time and was serving on the Wisconsin Right to Life Board of Directors. A stockbroker I worked with regularly approached me with a new idea for a stock to…
On December 15, 2021, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the Federal Reserve System made a significant shift in monetary policy in response to rising inflation. The Committee accelerated the reduction of its bond-buying program in order to tighten the money supply and projected three increases in the benchmark federal funds rate in 2022,…
Much has been written about the morality of investing in the stock market, often expressed in terms of an obligation to avoid stock in companies that are engaged in immoral businesses. This can be very difficult considering the wide variety of business activities of major corporations and the diverse stock holdings in modern mutual funds,…
September 6, 2017 Catholic business leader Christopher Smith (pictured left) first got into business to do some good in the world—and if his successful career path is any indication—he’s doing this good work extremely well. As one of the founders of Dig Media, the parent company of Investment News Network (INN), Smith manages Catholic business leader Christopher Smith (pictured left)…
October 8, 2009 Tune in Saturday morning, October 10, from 11 a.m. to Noon EST (8 a.m. – 9 a.m. PST) to The Catholic Business Hour with host Dick Lyles, and catch a live, call-in interview with Mary Cunningham Agee, a former Wall Street banker and Marketing Strategist for two Fortune 100 companies who transformed a personal…
With the passing of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, the United States and Canada, indeed the world, lost an exceptionally wise, wry and erudite Catholic voice; a voice whose special gift was to shed light and clarity on the most fundamental of Catholic principles and their application in today’s culture. Fr. Neuhaus died peacefully in his…
