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Dear Friends,
Sometimes it is helpful to take a step back and look at the big picture, and that is probably truer about investing than any other aspect of our lives. We know that many of you are experiencing anxiety and angst about the markets’ performances this year. We understand that – the fear of loss is more powerful than the joy of gains. No one was worried last year when the record-setting highs were made in the equity markets. This year is ‘reversion to the mean’. The ‘little’ picture is what happened yesterday, or last week, or the first or second quarters of the year. The big picture is something quite remarkable: the long-term trajectory of stock values, which are the result of millions of people coming to work every day to add value, incrementally, day by day, to their companies. The chart shown here not only gives you the big picture of S&P 500 index returns since the 1920s—the result of all that labor—but also shows, in the gray vertical bars, how few downturns we have experienced compared with times when the markets were rising. Investing in the U.S. stock market has risks, as does gambling. However, it is more like putting money down in a casino where the odds of winning, over time, greatly exceed the potential for losses. Dear Friends,
Summer is definitely here (check your calendar or thermometer). Please enjoy your long July 4th weekend – Happy Independence Day to you. Hopefully you have plans to gather with friends and family and perhaps travel somewhere. We wish you well staying cool, hydrated, and reapplying sunscreen often. Dear Friends,
Happy June, everybody. Hopefully this note finds you happy, healthy, and looking forward to some fun this summer. Please stay safe, enjoy yourselves, keep the news media exposure to a minimum, and don’t forget the sunscreen. If you are traveling or settling in by the pool, enjoy the following insights. Despite all the pessimism that is so pervasive, we will do our best to be your source for a little positivity. Dear Friends,
Happy Teacher Appreciation week! As our education professional clients look longingly to the end of another school year, they may leave behind the 3 R’s for a while: Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic. Best wishes for a relaxing summer holiday and safe travels. What has consumed the attention of the media, the markets and most all of us this year have been the 3 I’s: Inflation, Interest rates, and Invasion. Added together, those topics spell volatility. Market Implications There’s no sugar-coating the news: the U.S. and global markets took a hit in the first four months of 2022, offering investors an experience that they haven’t been accustomed to during the long bull market: a bit of red ink on their performance statements. There is nothing pleasant about down markets—not the anxieties they cause, not the paper losses, not the relentless drip, drip, drip of reports in the media about this or that daily downturn. The gut instinct is to stem the losses by selling before the market goes down further, but locking in losses after the fact has, historically, almost always been the wrong move. Nevertheless, many people do it, and sell to wiser investors who prefer buying their investments on sale. Dear Friends,
Spring has sprung! As March Madness concludes, the beautiful Florida weather has returned just as the Snowbirds are leaving, restaurant lines will get shorter and golf courses' greens fees become affordable. (Yes, that is a retread line from year’s past, but less snarky than referencing April Fool’s Day). Hopefully this note finds you well. Very soon, school will be out for the summer. When that happens, many children that rely on free or reduced meals at school will go hungry as their families struggle to feed them at home. As supporters of the All-Faiths Food Bank, we encourage you to consider reaching out to them with any financial help you may be able to provide. As their tagline reiterates: Child hunger is a problem we can solve together. Dear Friends,
Spring has (almost) sprung and the hits just keep on coming. Last year, COVID overwhelmed the news (and has not been completely pushed from our consciousness). And now, after months of troop buildups and all the warnings that Russia and their “emperor” intended to move into the sovereign nation of Ukraine, and all the denials and hope that war could be averted, the invasion has begun. More on this shortly. ZOOM Webinars for Clients We are taking our “Spring Break” from doing webinars this month. Stay tuned for the announcement about the April show. If you missed it, John did an excellent job of presenting the nuts and bolts of the RFPS Investment Planning Strategies a few weeks ago. The presentations can be found in the Media & Posts tab on our website www.realityfinancialplanning.com. If there are any topics for which a Zoom presentation would be relevant to you, please let us know. Dear Friends,
Because it is another unseasonably dreary day, I thought I would reach out and share some pearls of wisdom (?), insights, and general stuff. ZOOM Webinars for Clients We are excited (and you can be too) that our next Zoom webinar will be Wednesday, February 23, at 5:00. Have you ever wondered how and why we construct portfolios (and invest our own money) the way we do? There are as many investment approaches out there as there are financial advisors. Some work, some don’t. But through years of research and due diligence we have found that there is no doubt that passive index investing has outperformed active investing over the long-term. So, we have decided to share our philosophies and methods for using indexes and why we think that approach is superior to many others. Please join John (and I) as he presents the nuts and bolts of the RFPS Investment Planning Strategies. If you are interested in attending, please email us at Inquire@RealityFinancialPlanning.com and John will send you the ZOOM meeting details. As an FYI, all our past presentations can be found in the Media & Posts tab on our website www.realityfinancialplanning.com. If there are any other topics for which a Zoom presentation would be relevant to you, please let us know. Please allow me a moment of silence as I commiserate over the impending end of another football season (the Super Bowl is only three weeks away). Thanks, I feel better.
Of course, the end of football season puts us smack-dab on the middle of Snowbird Season – and for those of us that live here year-round…well, enough said on that. Because it is an unseasonably dreary day, I decided to dive into my “geek world” and shoot out a note to you all. Grab a cup of coffee – you may need it. Dear Friends,
In the inimitable words of my favorite comic strip character, Calvin (of Bill Waterson’s Calvin & Hobbes fame), “A new year…a fresh clean start”. However, another quote a few years later when talking about the new year, Hobbes said, “The problem with the future is that it keeps turning into the present.” Happy New Year to you. My hope for all of us is that this is a year of good health, much happiness and prosperity as we move forward with a life of fulfillment. Let’s hope that the acrimony surrounding vaccines, masks, politics, and general impatience with others can be replaced with open-minded compromise and more tolerance than we have seen over the past several years. |
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