Nothing About “Right Now” Is (Ever) Permanent
With another quarter of our financial journey behind us (the first quarter of the ‘new’ year), we wanted to pass along a few thoughts regarding what’s going on right now versus what is always true in our opinion.
At this moment, we can compare and contrast the current quarter-end to recent ones. As a Wall Street Journal article summarized, “Stock investors have been on a wild ride the past six or so months: The S&P 500 has gone from a record high, to being on the cusp of a bear market, to being back within striking distance of its recent peak.”
At this moment, financial headlines are closely watching what’s in store for Brexit, the shape of the U.S. Treasury yield curve, China trade talks, and other potential slowdowns and stimuli.
At this moment, a financial commentator proposed a new “golden cross” is supposedly signaling a bull market ahead, based on comparing “moving averages”. Noting the historical data isn’t sufficient to be telling, the author admits (emphasis ours): “The crosses derive their power not because there is something inherent but because many investors believe in them and act on them. Moreover, the media like the stories of golden crosses and death crosses, and promote them. This generates bullish or bearish sentiment.”
Seriously? Then there’s our perspective. > SEE MORE
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Waypoint Wealth Management
Well, How Do You Think About Your Retirement Income?
One of my favorite analogies for explaining retirement income is comparing it to taking water from a well. I realize that we’re fortunate and don’t need to do that much in this country, but let’s pretend that every day you go to a well to get your drinking water. Of course, you need to rely on it for providing you with water for a very, very long time. In order for the ability to quench your thirst for decades, you want to be sure you have enough of a supply of water at all times. But, you cannot control how much this particular well gets replenished with rain, so you would be careful to only take out the necessary amount to meet your needs, while not taking too much out and running a high risk of drying out the well. The level of the water, in the meantime, will rise and fall depending on the season you’re in – those rainy, plentiful seasons, and those dry and arid times when there isn’t any replenishment. Your job is to take what you need from the well, while having confidence in the ability to drink water even during those dry times. Through rainy seasons and dry ones, you need to be able to rely on a steady source of drinking water.
Retirement income is similar to this, isn’t it? > SEE MORE
Posted by:
Pete Dixon, CFP®
Partner and Advisor
Allocating Your Assets: Your Biggest Investment Decision
It’s so ingrained in how we manage our clients’ investment portfolios, we talk about it all the time. “Asset Allocation”. But what is it? What are assets, and what happens when you allocate them?
Asset Allocation: The Big Picture
Big picture, an asset is anything beneficial you have or have coming to you. For our purposes, it’s anything of value in your investment portfolio. After bundling your investable assets into asset classes, we allocate, or assign, each asset class a particular role in your portfolio. And we think this is one of the most important investment decisions you can make.
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Waypoint Wealth Management
Where Do We (Or Can We) Go From Here?
From March 2009 through September 2018 — a period encompassing almost 10 years and the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis — the world’s stock markets performed exceedingly well. Over this period, the global stock market was up 14.3 percent per year while the S&P 500 was up 17.9 percent per year. This means that $1 invested in global stocks grew to $3.60 while $1 invested in the S&P 500 was worth $4.84. Other than the first few years of this period, stock market volatility was also well below its long-term average. This changed swiftly in 2018’s fourth quarter, with global stocks down 12.7 percent and the S&P 500 down 13.5 percent. These bleak returns came with a corresponding uptick in volatility; the quarter saw numerous days with stocks either rising or falling by 2 percent or more.
With such a dramatic reversal, we wanted to revisit the stock market’s longer-term behavior, so we can put more perspective around its recent movements, and also reinforce longer-term investment principles that we continue to believe represent the best course of action, or more accurately inaction. > SEE MORE
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Waypoint Wealth Management
You (Get To) Choose Which Game To Play
We hope that you and yours are doing well as we swing into the holiday season. In a world both wondrous and sometimes weird, you may have mixed emotions about the days, months, and the new year ahead of us – an intermingling of fear and optimism, hope and hesitation, possibly even sorrow and joy. And you may have noticed that the markets have been swinging through every one of these same emotions as well, in real, seemingly manic time.
For capital markets, that’s perfectly alright. In fact, it’s precisely what they’re supposed to be doing. Out of the seeming chaos, an efficient method arises for setting and re-setting relatively fair pricing. It’s exactly how tens of millions of trades occur every day, at lightning speed, around the world. If prices instead grew sluggish or stagnant, so too would our ability to make money in the markets.
That said, while apparent mayhem may make perfect sense for moving markets, it’s not how you need to live when thinking about your portfolio. As an individual investor, you get to choose which game to play. > SEE MORE
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