Special Note: Just a reminder that we offer tax preparation through our tax team at Summit Tax Services/Heemer Klein. If you’d be interested in a quote, as we’re very competitive, please give us a call at 586-459-5340. Our goal is to make tax time easier on you.
2022 will go down as one of the hardest years for the markets. Both the bond and stock markets had massive drops. The Bloomberg US Aggregate bond index has been negative five times since it was created 45 years ago, and the most significant decline before this year was 2.9%. This year it lost nearly 15%.
Growth Stocks Experienced Large Losses in 2022
Growth stocks got hit especially hard, with Tesla down 70%, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, down 64%, and even Amazon was down 51%. The larger indexes also had a rough year, with the S&P 500 dropping 19.4% and more than 20% below its record high, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 33.1%. Overall, it was the worst year since 2008 for stocks and arguably one of the worst years ever since both stocks and bonds got hurt by rising interest rates and inflation.
New Environment Calls For New Strategies
In 2022, we did everything we could to improve our processes and our performance. We have added new data feeds, new research companies, and new strategies to our daily managed portfolio process. We would love for you to come by the office for a review meeting so we can show you some of the new techniques if you’re interested. We used these new tools this month.
In December, Santa Claus did not arrive as the S&P 500 was negative 6.3% and the Nasdaq was down 8.73%, while our daily actively managed portfolios were actually positive. We encourage you to look at your statements to see the overall performance and give us a call if you’d like to discuss it.
Adapting to a Challenging Environment
As you know, we have many tools in our toolbox, including the ability to purchase investments that profit when the stock market goes down. This is called hedging. Our ultimate goal is to make money, so we’re using what we believe to be all the appropriate tools in our toolbox to accomplish that goal potentially. We anticipate that the US economy and Global economy could possibly dip into a recession, so we will continue to hedge to profit from the environment and watch inflation, the Ukraine war, the Federal Reserve, corporate earnings, and the markets like a hawk. This is why we manage our active portfolios daily. Our goal for 2023 is to adapt to the challenging environment and have a very profitable year.
Schedule a Review Meeting
We’d love to have a review meeting with you to discuss investments, retirement income planning, college planning for kids or grandkids, tax preparation, health insurance, including Medicare supplemental and prescription drug plans, and various other financial planning topics. Please contact our office at (586) 226-2100 to schedule a meeting today!
Keep Us Informed of Financial Changes
If you’ve had any changes to your income, job status, marital status, 401K options, address, or any other financial changes, please get in touch with us right away. We hope you and your family have a wonderful, safe, and healthy start to 2023!
Happy New Year to you and your family!
Sincerely,
with contributions from Robert Wink, James Wink, Zachary Bachner, and James Baldwin
