It hasn’t always been this easy to invest in businesses. Writing of the 15th and 16th centuries in Europe, scholar Wilfred McClay writes: “The rapid expansion of trade was remaking the social and political map of Europe, at the same time that explorers were redrawing the physical map. In earlier eras, wealth and power had rested in the hands of those who owned land, but that was about to change. The years of expanding seaborne travel saw the rising economic and political power of a merchant class made up of those traders who had become wealthy from the risks and rewards of expanding commerce.”

If you have spent any amount of time with me in one of our conference rooms, you know I am a big fan of a good story. However, while stories can be persuasive (and hopefully entertaining), statistics are much better guides for decision-making.

“Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with the 130 IQ. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing.” —Warren Buffett

Our family's Spring Break trip to Florida in 2000 took place during the infamous dot-com bubble burst. I can vividly remember my dad's reaction to the news of the bursting of the tech bubble. He had some of his portfolio (I'm not sure how much) invested in dot-com stocks via the Nasdaq Composite Index, which declined by 25% that week of our Spring Break. It ultimately took 15 years for the Nasdaq to get back to its high from the year 2000.

When advising our clients to stay the course (i.e. stay fully invested), our advice is not based on wishful thinking about the markets. The advice is grounded in historical reality, and in a hope for the future.

These past few weeks have seen extreme stock market volatility, the WHO declaring a pandemic, and the U.S. implementing travel restrictions and many other measures (with more to come, assuredly) to help combat the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus.

Our thoughts on the current stock market malaise -- and accompanying Coronavirus fears.

Amidst the politically-charged climate in which we live, we can lose sight of the progress mankind has made over time. We often remind our clients the U.S. stock market has handsomely paid patient, long-term investors over time. One simple method for gauging economic progress over time is to consider the evolution of the largest publicly-traded companies in the US. Of the ten largest companies in the US today, only four were founded prior to 1970 (JPMorgan Chase; Johnson & Johnson; Procter & Gamble; and Visa).

The bull market lives on. This bull market had near deaths in 2011 and 2018 – each time narrowly escaping the 20% decline threshold that defines a bear market (and thus ends the bull market).

When I first drafted this post (on 8/7/19), the S&P 500 Index was 5.75% off its recent high. As I prepare to post this to our website (two days later, on 8/9/19), the U.S. market has rallied a bit, so that we are less than 4% off the all-time high for the S&P 500 Index.

When it comes to saving for retirement, is it good enough to be maxing out your 401(k) – but saving nothing above that? As with most areas of personal finance, the answer depends on your situation.

One of the most important rules of investing is this: tuning in to media sources (be they financial or general) will not help you be a better investor. In fact, it will likely make you a poorer investor. Does it help you to know how much the Dow or the Nasdaq moves in a given day? If the Dow is down 200 points today, will that alter your investment strategy? Will it alter your mood?