The Opportunity
As a trusted financial advisor, your goal is to help every client achieve financial peace of mind—today, tomorrow, and throughout their retirement. That’s no easy task in today’s unpredictable market.
At Secure Retirement, we see this challenge as a very real opportunity to serve investors well, using a time-tested, research-based approach to protecting assets in all market circumstances—even in the face of yet another bear market.
A boutique asset manager, we can help you diversify your own business to protect client assets and your own livelihood. Designed to address the financial needs of successful middle-class investors, at this time our approach leverages an uncommonly low equity allocation, and we purchase stocks only when values are low. As a result, our portfolios are poised to help investors dramatically reduce risk, protect their valued savings, and keep their nest eggs intact. And to help you communicate this value with your clients, we provide monthly updates on our current approach in plain language that speaks to even your most novice investors.
Contact us today at (925) 855-4300 to learn about our personalized asset management services and how we can help you and your clients prepare for change and gain financial peace of mind.
Economic and Market Update
Economic & Market Update, April 2014
Dream Growth
By Richard Morey
In this month’s report we are going to focus just on the markets, both stock and bond, weaving the relevant economic facts into the discussion. We’ll begin with the stock market.
The Stock Market
Through the first quarter, the S&P 500 index of large U.S. stocks gained 1.81%, while the Dow went down .15% and Nasdaq went up .84%. This is a far cry from the large gains stocks had in 2013. Before looking at where stocks may be headed, we will first explore why they have gone up so much in recent quarters. This is actually an easy exercise, as last year’s gains can be summarized in one phrase – belief in the Federal Reserve Board’s infallibility.
Over the last few years investors decided risk cannot strike their portfolio as long as the Fed is doing something (anything). The Fed has been doing three things in recent years – keeping short-term interest rates low, printing money and talking. As I have described numerous times in these reports, the Fed’s money-printing has actually done little if anything to spur our economy. How could it, when almost all the money they have printed has sat idle in the banks’ accounts? (Yes, they have loaned out money to “emerging market” economies, particularly in Asia, but almost none of the money printed in the last two years has been lent out to either U.S. businesses or consumers.)
Somewhat surprisingly, the Fed is now curtailing the amount they are printing each month. Thus far they have reduced the amount they are printing from $85 billion to $55 billion a month, and they have clearly stated they intend to continue reducing this amount by $10 billion a month until they are out of the money-printing business. This means they will no longer be engaged in “quantitative easing,” i.e. printing money, by this fall.
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