Introducing the newest team member at The Wealth Group: Jaron Kissner.

tl;dr version: Americans are very pessimistic right now. This is a contrarian indicator. Stocks have an 84% chance of being higher 12 months from now. It might take some time, but forward-looking return prospects are good when folks are discouraged. The average 12-month forward return in past instances like this is +15%.

A stock market correction is defined as a 10% decline in the market. We officially entered a correction earlier this week. We recognize that most of our clients are seasoned, savvy investors that do not hit the panic button after a correction. We are always impressed at how calmly the bulk of our clients handle recessions and even bear markets. That said, it’s still painful for all of us (advisors and clients alike). We know our clients are not immune to being troubled over market downturns – particularly when coupled with troubling geopolitical events.

How about getting your mortgage paid off before turning 35? Sounds great, right?

January is going down as a tough month in the markets (putting it mildly). As I write this article on January 31st, 2022, the US stock market is down about 6.5% for the month. That is not one of the 15 worst months in US stock market history since 1950, but it’s a bad one.

My family and I are currently going through old bins that have been collecting dust in storage for years. As one can imagine, it's a long process that brings with it many difficult determinations about what to keep (always too much), and what to toss (never enough).

If you were living in 1900, you likely did not own any stocks. Only 1% of Americans at that time owned stocks (vs. 56% of Americans today). And if you happened to be a part of that elite 1% stock-owning group in 1900, your main investment option was railroad stocks. Railroads were 63% of US stock market value!

As students of investing and markets, one of our passions is helping our clients grow in knowledge and appreciation of how the US stock market works. What exactly is "the stock market"? Today, there are approximately 3,667 publicly-traded companies in the US -- collectively worth over $50 trillion.

Everyone knows you should start investing as young as possible. But not many people actually start investing at a young age. So how can we get this message into the minds and hearts of our children and grandchildren? My oldest is just 6, so I'll have to report back to you in about 15 years on whether our family has any success in this arena.

Am I concerned about rising inflation, absurdly low interest rates, money-printing on steroids across the developed world, a US political agenda favoring higher tax rates, relatively high stock valuations (compared to the past), and increasing political polarization in the US? Yes, I am concerned about those things. But those things don’t have anything to do with my family’s financial goals, so I won’t adjust my investment portfolio based on those concerns.

The last time I wrote about bitcoin on our blog was September 13, 2018. I was dunking on bitcoin back then, gloating about how smart we and our clients were for avoiding this asset during the late-2017 hype that drove bitcoin up to $19,835. That post hasn’t aged very well. And you know what, this post may not age well, either. Predictions are the toughest game in town. An impossible task. I won’t make any price predictions on bitcoin today, but I will share a bit of what I know.

There are a lot of ways to pay for college, and not all of them are good. Student loans are following college grads around for years after graduation, delaying wealth-building and the ability to achieve financial independence.