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In 2019, I wrote the article you see below. At the time, I was extremely excited about the prospect of ETFs beginning to trade at zero cost, and frankly, I still am. Free trading of ETFs (and stocks in many cases) is a huge advancement for investors and gives us, as your financial advisor, additional tools to manage your portfolio. Below is a quick refresher on the history of ETFs, which explains what happened in 2019 and why I was excited about it. I have added additional commentary to the original article in italics.

Anyone can seem like a good financial advisor when markets are doing well. The expectation investors have when investing in capital markets is to make money, so when expectations are easy to meet, the bar tends to be set pretty low. However, it’s downturns in the markets that separate great financial advisors from mediocre ones. It’s times like these when people may wonder what their financial advisor is doing during this bear market.

In this article, we talk about the portfolio change we recently made. We also give our views on the news of the Silicon Valley Bank bank failure and, subsequently, the failure of Signature Bank.

By no measure was 2022 a good year for investors. Looking into 2023, there are three issues that will impact the market: The Fed and Interest Rates, Ukraine/Russia/Energy, China/Supply Chains.

If you’ve ever planted and cared for trees, particularly fruit trees, you know that, in the initial years, the saplings require quite a bit of extra attention. Newly planted trees need lots of water until established, along with fertilizer and prudent trimming. Initially, trimming branches may weaken the tree, but it's important for the tree's long-term health. I view market corrections in the same light. Without periodic setbacks such as a correction or bear market, we would always be teetering on the edge of a bubble. Most of you who were investing in the early 2000s and during the 2008 financial crisis know when a bubble bursts, it is far more painful than an average correction.

When someone says “The Stock Market,” often the images that come to mind are screaming traders in blue jackets or a large mahogany desk perched atop the glass and steel of Wall Street’s skyscrapers. While everyone has a different image of the stock market, when gauging how well the market is doing, most investors think of the same two or three market indexes. The problem with using these popular indexes as the comparison is that investors are often much more diversified and conservative than these “benchmarks.”

With two tough quarters, we are not sure what the third quarter will look like. However, we know there are three questions on everyone's mind: 1. Are we in a recession? (If not now, is one coming?) 2. When will inflation (specifically gas prices) come down? 3. How long will this market last?...

We are facing a bump in the road right now, and I can feel anxiety and panic coming from some clients. I’m writing this today to hopefully relieve some of those emotions and explain what has happened in markets, why it has happened, and what FSG is doing. In addition, this past Monday, the 9th, Mark Carter and I recorded a video talking about many of the same things.