Feeling Poorer Today + Mr. Wonderful
Are you feeling poorer these days? Are your eyes opening wider in disbelief at the gas pump? Maybe you just finished your market shopping and didn’t have much in the bags to show for what you paid. Perhaps you’ve heard the words “inflation” and “recession” mentioned more times than you’d like to hear them? When you looked at your investments recently did you need to take a breath?
Prices are up, markets are down. It happens all the time…including June of 2022. It was another disappointing month in the markets. Stocks fell again, closing out the worst quarter for the market since the onset of the pandemic in early 2020. The S&P 500 is now down 21% since hitting a record high at the beginning of 2022, having entered a bear market earlier in June. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq have also fallen. The Dow is down 5,562.87 points, or 15.3% year-to-date. The Nasdaq is down 4,616.24 points, or 29.5%. The Russell 2000 is down 537.32 points, or 23.9%.[1]
Hopefully, you know that most things don’t travel in a straight line. There are always going to be troubled times and happy times. For the last twelve years…it’s been mostly happy times for investors. Streaks don’t last forever. Even Steph Curry misses one free throw out of every ten. (BTW Congratulations to the Warriors on becoming NBA champs again.)
There are two major things that YOU can control during this downturn: 1. Your spending, and 2. Your attitude. Since we don’t know how long this decline will continue, it could be a good time to cut unnecessary expenses and restart a budget. As for attitude, here’s a classic viewpoint:
“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude is more important than facts, more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what people think, what they say or do. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we embrace. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play the one string we have, our attitude. Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it. We’re in charge of our Attitudes.”[i][2]
Perspective is key. Take 3 tennis players across the net from Serena Williams. A young child, a seasoned club player, and Roger Federer. Here comes a 100 mile-an-hour serve from Serena. The child is scared, covers up and doesn’t even see the ball. Yikes! The club player attempts a return but whiffs. Roger sends back an easy baseline winner. Same ball, same speed, same Serena. The only difference is the experience and the perspective of the three players receiving the serve.
The markets are down and volatile. These times can be scary…or an opportunity to return a winner. Kevin O’Leary, aka Mr. Wonderful on Shark Tank is a shrewd investor who is known for his straight-shooting attitude. He keeps a close eye on the markets. Please watch Kevin’s “no recession” perspective here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIN8J53hIss
Your financial concerns today are understandable. It doesn’t mean that you ditch the long-term plan. On the road from LA to Santa Barbara it’s normal to run into some traffic slowdowns along the way. Do you really want to get off Pacific Coast Highway and head up into the mountains to try and avoid the delay? That’s probably a tougher and longer road. Instead, be patient, turn on some music, listen to a podcast, or call up a friend and enjoy the blue Pacific Ocean out your window.
Today’s the day.
Mitch Fisher & Ryan Fisher
[1] Washington Post 6-30-22
[2]Charles Swindoll