Happy St. Patrick’s Day! I feel compelled to write a mid-month Confident Chronicles due to the extreme market volatility of late. Last week the S&P 500 dipped down…

Lots of changes with this month’s update!

Future Contributions have been updated as they always are on the first trading day of the month.

New Tactical Allocations have been updated.

Finally, you will notice that you need to click “I Agree” when logging into your Participant Dashboard. 

We require this each year to comply with the…

We have one month under our belt for 2025. 

And what a wild ride it has been already!  (see S&P 500 info below).

With the first month of investing in your employer’s plan, it’s a good time to review the amount you are contributing. 

There are new limits in 2025 for 401(k) and 403(b) plans and you have the opportunity to invest more if you can. 

The amounts depend on your age, and it’s really convoluted this year:

Anyone using the Plan Confidence Tactical Strategies should have received an email at 9am EST letting them know to log in to their Participant Dashboard.

The Stock and Bond holdings have both gone into “sell” (negative) signals for more than three consecutive trading days.  (See charts below):

Last night I was honored to be one of the 300+ guests for the inaugural Sarasota Tech Summit.

As the owner of a startup fintech company in Sarasota, I was highly intrigued. 

Sarasota is on the “suncoast” of western Florida.  We are an hour south of Tampa and have some of the most beautiful beaches with white powdery sand that does not get hot! 

Siesta Key beach is constantly on Top 10 lists of the country’s greatest beaches. 

However, most of us “locals” don’t hang out at Siesta Key as it is very touristy. 

I put “local” in quotes as almost everyone. . .

I would like to wish you and all your loved ones a very happy new year!

My wish is that 2025 brings you health, wealth and happiness like you have never seen before. 

The end of a year is a great time to reflect and figure out what went well and what could have been better.  Then many of us make resolutions of things we are going to change.  Things we are going to eliminate that have been holding us back.  As well as a resolve to incorporate new habits that will make us better.

The problem with resolutions is they normally don’t last into February.

If you don’t believe me, go to your . . .

I hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving!  I am not sure about you, but I ate way too much food, drank some good wine, and had a great time with my parents visiting me and my daughter for the week. 

November was a great month for the stock and bond markets.  We have the election(s) behind us without any uncertainty.  This is good for the markets.  They don’t care which party gets elected; they just need . . .

According to a 9/21/24 NewsNation article, CEO turnover is up over 50% from the previous year.

It’s not just in our industry.  But major companies like Starbucks, Nike, and Boeing to name just a few.

And it seems that every week there is another CEO stepping down (or being forced out) in the financial industry.

Is there an underlining “cause” for the increase in 2024?

I hope you had a Happy Halloween!

I am not sure how I had any candy left for the trick o treaters as I have been eating all the Kit Kats and Peanut Butter Cups I bought over the weekend for them.

Fortunately, all the candy is gone, so I will slow down my candy habit.

Speaking of slowdowns, the markets have dramatically slowed down. . . .

The S&P 500 (the “proxy” we use for the American Stock market) fell for the first week of September.  Then it went almost straight up for the last three weeks.  Just as predicted in last month’s Confident Chronicles.  In fact, there were only four down days in the last three weeks of September.

The market dropped over four percent in the first week and then rose over six percent in the last three weeks. 

We will see if the upward market momentum . . .

Last night I was chilling in my pool around 8pm after playing a couple of hours of pickleball (I live in Florida, don’t judge! - lol)

I opened a Sam Adams (Octoberfest) and picked up my cell phone.

I was surprised by the number of emails I received forwarding me the “breaking news” from Financial Advisor IQ. The title of the article was, “Fidelity to Block Credential Sharing on 401(k) accounts; Pontera Rallies FA Troops”. (Click the picture below to read the full article).

I was not shocked by Fidelity’s decision and here is why. . .

I hope that you and your family had a great Labor Day weekend!

I know that I did.  I celebrated the birth of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). 

ERISA turned 50 years old on September 2nd!

This law was very monumental, as it gave birth to the 401(k), which has changed the retirement industry completely. 

But I digress, another month has gone by and we saw another month of extreme volatility.

As predicted in the 8/1/2024 Confident Chronicles, the stock market has suffered from continued volatility. 

Today at 9am EST clients using the Plan Confidence Semi-Tactical models received an email / “push” notification on their phone letting them know new advice is ready.

We have moved the Semi-Tactical models into a very “defensive” posture due to…

It looks like the summer rally lasted for about four weeks.

The month of July has been just as volatile as this whole year has.

The beginning of the month started out strong with the S&P 500 rising about 3.5% in the first two weeks.  Then it peaked around July 16th and started a decline of 4%, ending up almost where it started. 

Let’s take a look at the chart above that I look at every day the stock market is open.  This is a chart of the S&P 500 with several data points. 

Specifically, it shows the following: