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Thank you to all of our clients, family, and friends who attended our 2018 Holiday Breakfast. If you didn’t have time to schedule an annual review of your financial plan during the hustle and bustle of the holidays, give us a call and set up an appointment so we can get going on making 2019 another positive and productive year.
Last week I tried to provide some calm perspective on the recent fluctuations in the markets. Again, in summary: the corrections we’re experiencing right now are perfectly normal, and not nearly as scary as some of the headlines would have you believe.
The US economy passed a major milestone this summer: the longest bull market in history. Starting with the bottom of the market in March of 2009 through August of 2018, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 290%, the S&P 500 is up 320%, and the Nasdaq is up 520%. 2018 has also seen more job growth, strong consumer sales and housing numbers, and Apple and Amazon hitting trillion-dollar valuations.
As much as we caution investors against making knee-jerk reactions to the news, your investments and your long-term planning don’t exist in a vacuum either. That’s why when I attend conferences like the Barron’s Top Independent Advisors Summit or the Schwab Impact Conference, I like to come back with a report that I think will be beneficial to my clients and listeners. It’s just another way that we at Keen Wealth try to give the folks we work with a comprehensive financial-planning experience.
At our 2017 Holiday Breakfast, Matt Wilson and I gave a presentation to our clients, families, and friends that analyzed the state of the economy at the end of a record year and attempted some predictions for where we could be headed in 2018.
When people ask, “How’s the market doing?” the response is typically based on how the Dow Jones Industrial Average is doing (Dow for short). The Dow has been around since the late 1800s, so it has a long history of measuring how the US stock market has performed.