Insights

February 15th, 2024

After a rough 2022 in the equity (worst year since 2008) and fixed-income (worst bond market since 1870) markets, 2023 was a nice rebound year. We saw the Dow Jones return just over 13%, the S&P 500 rallied over 24% (bolstered by technology), and the US Aggregate Bond Index gained over 5% after being negative most of the year. At the beginning of 2023, there were many uncertainties with the market. There were talks of a potential recession, inflation that was still stubbornly high, the ongoing Russia / Ukraine situation, and the world was still adjusting to the decisions made during 2020. Despite these fears and uncertainties, we saw markets return a good amount of the value lost in 2022.

June 7th, 2023

Do you know what retirement will look like for you?

One thing that can help is to look at those that are already there. How do they spend their time?

There was a study by The Wall Street Journal that showed how retirees spend their time in an average day and the results weren’t the stuff of dreams, except for the 9 hours of sleep (this is good and probably should be the norm for more people while they work, running around crazy and burned out.) and the 6 hours of relaxing/leisure. However, the next activity was watching TV… for 5 hours. Ughh… 5 hours of TV?? Then we have 17 min of exercise, 34 min of reading, and 31 min socializing. Wow.  I am not sure these stats look all that different to how time is spent in prison.

May 4th, 2023

Attention spans have diminished rapidly lately as our over-stimulated brains bounce from thing to thing, leaving important information behind—traded for the new shiny thing that perpetually distracts us from the big picture. It currently sits at 8 seconds. 8 Seconds! For the sake of comparison, a goldfish has an attention span of 9 seconds. Yikes. There are devasting effects from this and maybe worth a separate article down the road, but for the purposes of this one we are looking at investing behavior and the stock market.

April 19th, 2023

It seems everywhere we turn these days, we read more and more about a looming recession. The challenge is that recessions, and their timing, are difficult to predict. Many times, the economy enters into a recession and bottoms about the same time we learn we are “officially” in a recession. Plus, the stock market typically is 6-9 months ahead of the economy and will typically head higher long before the economic picture looks and feels better. We may be in one of these times as we speak. As you know, we experienced a tough stock market environment in 2022 while the economic and company earnings picture looked pretty good. Conversely, we may be witnessing a slowdown in economic & earnings activity, but the stock market could have seen the bottom already. Or, if we do see it go lower again, we are most likely closer to the end of this correction, rather than at the beginning.

February 7th, 2023

After many years of low inflation and FED induced historic low interest rates, things took an abrupt turn in 2022.  While there are other issues we will discuss below, these were the main drivers last year in the markets.  The S&P 500 suffered it’s worst loss since 2008 (down 18.1%), while the tech-heavy Nasdaq suffered a loss of (32.54%) and many stocks (like Amazon) were down much more than this (down 50%). This was a big change after a decade of tech / growth outperformance.  What made it feel worse is that we experienced the worst year decline in bonds / fixed income in modern history, down (13.01%).  Worst year before 2022 came in 1994 (down 3%). Outside of just a few asset classes (energy, utilities, cash), there wasn’t a lot of places to hide with 93% of asset classes losing money.  In the last 20 years, this is only 2^nd to the 94% of asset classes losing money during the 2008 financial crisis.

January 9th, 2023

Well, what is being called the SECURE 2.0 Act was just signed into law as part of a larger 4,000 page Omnibus bill, so we wanted to update you with the highlighted changes most likely to matter to you that are included.

As we progress towards year end, there are some things to make sure we review in order to check all the boxes before 2023 arrives. Don’t let the distractions of this year keep you from properly planning in these different areas. Some are just good things to think through on an annual basis, while others have a deadline of tax time, or even year end. The Inflation Reduction Act introduced new rebates and credits, but these will be for 2023 on, not 2022, so plan accordingly. Let us know if you have any questions or want to discuss any of these items in more detail.

The purpose to life is a heavy and controversial question. However, I believe we can agree for now that it isn't merely existing–simply to be alive--but the quality of this time that is important. To live a miserable 100 years is not anyone's goal. We can often get hung up on the duration when perhaps it is the ability to "suck out all the marrow of life" that we should strive for, as Thoreau famously said. What if we could have both?

Thank you to all who attended our market update, both in person and on zoom.  We had quite a few people ask for a recording but unfortunately, we can’t record it.  Please see some of the slides we covered, along with a brief summary of our discussion.

This was just signed into law 8.17.22 so it is still being digested, but we wanted to send you a quick summary of what it entails. First off, it is comical that it is called the Inflation Reduction Act. Seems to be an effort to get support for something everyone could agree on needing (reducing inflation), but the proof is largely absent from the pudding.