Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. is a Naples, FL and Newport, RI based financial advisory firm. We have been ranked by Barron’s as one of the top independent financial advisors in the nation for the last eight consecutive years. We manage portfolios for individuals, families, and small businesses throughout the United States.
Would You Rather Have $1 Million or a Penny That Doubles Daily for 30 Days?
Long-time client Tom recently emailed me the following question and answer. I have seen various versions of this in the past, and I always enjoy rereading it. This piece appears to have been from the company Grow, www.grow.acorns.com, which has partnered with CNBC to deliver educational features on developing successful money habits.
As you know, we are fans of the simple but effective strategy of compound interest. Compounding is the process of using your dividends to buy more shares of the company that just paid them to you. Over time, the act of continually reinvesting dividends creates a snowball effect in which your initial investment grows exponentially.
Last year ended on a sour note for stock-only investors, with the S&P 500 losing more than 9% in December and more than 13% for the quarter. December’s performance was the second-worst December on record for the index. While we weren’t surprised by the correction, the magnitude of the decline looked excessive given the lack of any meaningful negative surprises.
The New York Times ran a piece in December titled “Investors Have Nowhere to Hide as Stocks, Bonds, and Commodities All Tumble.” The article highlighted the difficulty investors faced in 2018. Most major asset classes fell last year or edged out minimal gains in the final few days of the year.
Here is something I’ve been reviewing with clients that is helping with their unsettledness over the past three months. Most of you have a balanced portfolio, which includes a mix of cash, bonds, precious metals, and stocks. When you hear and read about the market’s decline and the uncertain period ahead, it is wise to remember these nasty headlines are not affecting your entire portfolio. Most of you have approximately 50% invested in equities and the other 50% invested in securities which tend to hold their value or decline less compared to stocks.
The 2008/2009 global financial crisis destroyed almost $12 trillion of America’s net wealth. Measured globally, the figure was much larger. Many households and businesses saw their net worth cut in half, or worse. Wealth that had been accumulated over years of diligent saving and investment was annihilated in a matter of months.
Not long ago, Wall Street’s favorite acronym was BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). The BRIC countries were hyped by many of the big brokerage firms as an investment opportunity with profound promise. As a group, the BRICs were believed to have attractive natural resources, a young overall population, and years of robust growth ahead.
Federal deficits and debt are a perennial worry for many investors, but while a burgeoning U.S. government is a long-term problem, public finance at the state level may be the more immediate concern. The Wall Street Journal recently ran a feature highlighting the troubling condition of state budgets.
Even nine years after the last recession, many state budgets still haven’t fully
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