Market-related anxieties, fears, and hopes are always going to be out there — along with headline news stories. The headlines might make your head spin. Stop worrying! These concerns are already factored into the price of the stocks and businesses.
Continue reading“I have found that the importance of having an investment philosophy—one that is robust and that you can stick with— cannot be overstated.”
—David Booth
The US stock market has delivered an average annual return of around 10% since 1926 (1). But short-term results may vary, and in any given period stock returns can be positive, negative, or flat. When setting expectations, it’s helpful to see the range of outcomes experienced by investors historically. For example, how often have the stock market’s annual returns actually aligned with its long-term average? Continue reading
When you partner with Via Four, you are not only gaining decades worth of experience from our advisors, you are also getting the security of our national brokerage custodians.
According to Wikipedia, a custodian is a specialized financial institution responsible for safeguarding a firm’s or individual’s financial assets and is not engaged in “traditional” commercial or consumer/retail banking, such as mortgage or personal lending, branch banking, personal accounts, or automated teller machines.
{Read in 1:30 minutes} While informative and knowledgeable, the financial press is backward-looking rather than forward-looking, which means it has no predictive value for the future.
Journalists do a great job of describing what has already happened, but that’s known information, and as they say, hindsight is 20/20. Journalists can’t describe what will happen; it’s not their job to prognosticate the future. They make opinions about trends, but those opinions are not meaningful when it comes to managing portfolios.
Volatility is an expected component of the markets.
In order to be a successful investor and receive the return you desire from an equity market, you must be capable of tolerating and absorbing price fluctuations, as uncomfortable as it may be.
People want their stock to follow a straight line up – that’s not how global equity markets work. Continue reading