Half Time Report #133

Welcome, and thank you for listening. In this episode Josh Nelson and Jeremy Busch talk about the status of the economy in mid 2024. This is the audio from a video recording that you can find here: 

https://www.youtube.com/@keystonefinancial.com

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Contact Josh Nelson: https://www.keystonefinancial.com
Contact Jeremy Busch: https//www.keystonefinancial.com
Podcast Editor: Tim Leaman/info.primegen@gmail.com

Transcript

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Hi everyone, welcome to the Wiser Financial advisor show with Josh Nelson, where we get real, we get honest and we get clear about the financial world and your money. This is Josh Nelson, Certified Financial Planner and founder and CEO of Keystone Financial Services. Let the financial fun begin!

Josh: Welcome to the Keystone Financial Studios. Jeremy Busch and I are Certified Financial Planners and financial advisors. Financial planners get called different things from time to time. Our occupation is trying to understand the financial world and to give you an alternative to trying to learn from the media. Obviously, the media serves its purpose but these days it’s geared to a lot of click bait, so they're definitely going to be reporting more on the negative—and often the advice you might be getting there may not be in your best interest. It may be something to get somebody scared or upset or something like that. But often that's not very helpful as far as making financial decisions. So today, we're going to be talking about mid-year 2024. 

We did a forecast presentation back in January and it's actually been a pretty good year, by and large. Certainly, there have been some curveballs. So you can listen to all the experts; it doesn't matter who they are, whether the President, the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank. You could listen to all the people that supposedly know everything, but they don't know everything. They can't predict the future; they're all guessing, too, even if they’re making good, educated guesses. So keep that in mind for the second half of the year, and know there are likely to be a lot more curveballs coming up. 

The numbers we’re referring to are as of June 30th, and we are now in early August. There are still a lot of things that are relevant, and we'll correct as needed for what’s been updated. But many things haven't changed. We're going to continue to see a lot of uncertainty going forward. 

We’ll be talking about our opinions. We're trying to distill a lot of what the experts are saying in the environment that we're in, using our experience to give you some insights so you feel more comfortable going forward. 

First of all, we can expect economic expansion to continue. That expansion started in 2020 after the pandemic during which we had a huge slowdown in the global economy . We don't see a recession at this point. That is not in the forecast and hasn't been in the forecast. Of course, recessions do happen. That doesn't mean we won't have one eventually, but we don't think we're gonna see one in the near future. 

Second, regarding the S&P 500, where are we today year to date, Jeremy?

Jeremy: We are at about 10.6% last we checked. Originally while we're putting this together, it was about 17 to 20%, which could still definitely happen.

Josh: Yep. Annualized, I think we could still very well end there for the year. We've seen a pullback here this last week and there are a few reasons for that. Historically, we have a correction about once per year statistically and that's what we're experiencing right now. Of course, depending on how you're invested—especially if you were not diversified—it could have been a lot better or worse than that. But overall, the S&P 500 is a pretty good gauge. I think a lot of people pay attention to that as their benchmark for the overall market. So yeah, the forecast was 17 or 20% gain. We're still sticking to that. We still think that's likely to happen. We see what’s going on right now as being a correction, and statistically, stats are on our side. Most corrections don't turn into bear markets. I think 70 to 80% of the time the numbers hold pretty strong over the last 100 years; even though there's a correction once per year, a correction being defined as a 10% or more drop in the overall market. 20% down would be considered a bear market. And again there are certain sectors of the market now—some of the high flying MAG 7 stocks are actually down more than that. But again you'd have to be really undiversified to have all your money in that one area. We would never advise people to get so overly concentrated. 

So, we're sticking to 17 to 20% gain for the year, which still seems realistic based off of what we're seeing in the numbers. That's just a forecast; it’s like the weather folks predicting wildfires or any of that stuff. They don't know for sure either. They're just giving you their best guess. 

How about the bond market?

Jeremy: 

What we have seen and what we're seeing in the trend is that the aggregate bond index is outperforming short term Treasury bonds. For the first part of the year, short term Treasuries looked really good, paying five plus percent like a lot of CDs. But the aggregate bond index, which is a mix of different varieties of bonds in a lot of different durations, is starting to outperform the short term, which points us in the direction of maybe that yield curve normalizing a little bit. 

Josh: Yeah, versus we were inverted before. Inverted means shorter term securities are paying more. Think in terms of what you might own at your bank or your credit union; you might have a short-term CD paying a higher interest rate than the longer-term CD, which logically makes no sense. Why would you lock your money for a longer period of time in those circumstances? That's usually a sign of a possible recession. It doesn't always hold, though. And the fact that we have seen that normalized is a good sign. 

Everybody is talking about politics right now. Any financial conversation you get into on radio or Internet, anything you look at brings in politics. Obviously, there are all kinds of social issues and things that might be important to you. But we're just thinking from an economic standpoint about things that might impact us individually, such as our own tax rates, our own benefit from Social Security, things like that. As far as how the market reacts to politics, if we take the long view, sometimes the market doesn't care a whole lot, as long as there's some certainty of knowing who's in office. That's one reason why the market kind of likes gridlock. More to come, because lots of stuff has been happening with politics. 

What we’re trying to do here is give you an idea of the different areas of the market and what the experts are saying for those areas that they're personally suggesting people overweight or underweight. Our view at Keystone is always to stay very diversified. We don't like being lucky because that means that we're relying on things we can't control. I think it's important to recognize that a diversified investment, while it doesn't guarantee anything, is a lot safer place to be. It’s trading out the ability to make a killing. For example, if you've been overly concentrated on say NVIDIA or Apple or Microsoft or certain stocks that have been flying really high before, you're trading that off for getting killed. We’ve seen it play out when one of those goes way down. 

Jeremy: In general, we expect the US to outperform the rest of the world. It actually has done better, especially than a lot of the Asian markets. They've taken some pretty big hits recently.

Josh: You might be talking to your coworker about day trading video stock or Bitcoin or something like that, and we know that happens, but there aren’t many people who can consistently do that. In fact, Warren Buffett has said he’s never met anybody who can consistently time the market. So there's wise decision making that can happen. It's not to say that you just wing it and don't look at anything related to the economy. Our view hasn't changed. Small mid-cap should do better as the economy continues to improve, and we still think we're going to avoid a recession, although we don't know. 

Broadening participation in the market is not just a handful of stocks. We're starting to see the overall market participating more, and that really is a healthy thing. When you look at the rest of the market, we do prefer stocks overall as a category. That is maybe a bias we have, as we do like stocks and real estate as two asset classes for long-term holdings. The real estate could be your house. But those two asset classes have done a pretty good job at outpacing inflation over time.

Jeremy: The other part of that is that as the Fed eventually gets around to dropping interest rates, that'll play into bonds as well.

Josh: Next month almost certainly; it would be really unlikely that they wouldn't cut. In fact, this morning I read that 70% of the odds-makers are saying there will be a 50 basis point or a .5% cut in September. 

Jeremy: Which makes sense. Because I think the inflation numbers are continuing on the trend that the Fed has been watching. Their key indicators are moving in the direction that they wanted, so it would make sense to cut the rate.

Josh: And then regarding underwriting cash: We're not talking about going to no emergency fund. We always recommend at least a three to six months' living expense buffer in cash just for emergencies, for unexpected expenses. Sometimes more than that, depending on your situation. That’s just a sound financial planning principle. Then modest exposure, alternative investments are not right for everybody, but having a diversified portfolio, things that don't perform exactly like traditional stocks and bonds. Could be things like commodities, could be gold and other things like that, but in a very modest way, because any of those alternative investments are going to be very risky alone. In other words, you would never want to put your money all into one area. We want to look at your situation and make sure we understand your appetite for risk and how much return we're trying to get on your portfolio.

Jeremy: We are still in a bull market, a young bull market by the looks of it.

Josh: Yeah, and we hope it continues and that the odds hold on this one so that this market doesn't turn into a bear market. So hopefully, if we just look at the averages, we've got a few years left during which the overall trend is up—and I think trend is important. We're not saying the markets will not go down, of course. Just like if you get in an airplane, you're going to have turbulence, same thing with the market. It's people that stay in over the long run that tend to get the best returns, not people that jump in and out.

Jeremy: You know, 10% corrections happen on average once a year; it's nothing out of the ordinary. What's happening in the market right now, especially in years like this with the media playing into this and an election, you're inundated from both sides on this stuff. And so you have a bunch of people in the market trying to navigate what they're hearing out of everywhere and. It's a lot to digest and causes volatility. 

Josh: Yep, it sure does. And uncertainty causes volatility overall. We don't expect that's going away, so hold on to your hat. There could be more curveballs by the end of the year. Again, on average about five years is how long bull markets last. Sometimes they last a lot longer, such as the one leading into the pandemic. In fact, I remember we gave the forecast presentation before everything shut down in early 2020. That was one of the comments we made—that it was the longest bull market in history, longest expansion ever that we’d seen prior to that. Then COVID happened. We did have a bear market, we had a recession that we've been recovering from since then. So statistics are statistics.

Jeremy: What you see and what history tells us is that election cycles do support that bull market. It depends on what presidency is happening. A 4th year lame duck would suggest the incumbent basically cruising along. That was the case until recently, but it’s no longer the case. So I'm thinking probably somewhere in between on this.

Josh: Yeah, the reality is now that President Biden has said he's not running for reelection, Harris is going to be in as the candidate. So it's a little bit different. Biden suddenly has become a lame duck president. If Harris becomes the president, they're forecasting right now that the policies she would follow would be very similar to what President Biden has followed. We're not commenting on if that's good or bad. The reality is, she was and is his Vice President. Policymaking likely will be the same or near the same. Even cabinet members, things like that, will likely continue in the future. So it will be interesting to see what happens. Lots of curveballs could happen, but maybe once in history, I think, has a President had a gap where they lost an election and then came back to be in another election. The point is that the scenario we've got right now is different, so there isn’t a playbook on how things play out between now and the end of the year. 

Jeremy: We say this all the time—that 70% of the economy is just people like you and me spending money, right? That's what's driving a lot of stuff. And so, employee compensation, disposable income, we do see the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) inflation moving in the right direction, which is a key indicator the Fed likes to use. 

There's actual data to say this isn't a bubble that's happening in the market. There are actual earnings now, although specific companies miss earnings at times like  this. Happens all the time with individual companies. But when you look at the broader market, good things are still happening out there.

Josh: Yeah, there are a lot of sectors that don't all behave the same way. That’s why we recommend to stay diversified.

Josh: Consumers make up 70% of the economy, so people that want a job have a job. And we say that very broadly; I'm sure there are situations where somebody can't find work or they got laid off and they've got some gap in employment. But by and large, the labor market is very strong right now. I find this a little bit humorous because they say the “working population” is ages 25 to 54 and I'm only five years away from that. I know why they do that—because once you get beyond 55, there are a lot of people dropping out of the workforce retiring. 

Jeremy: The last labor market report that came in did throw the market for a bit because the unemployment rate jumped up a little bit. It's still very low, mind you, but the projection was missed for where economists thought it was going to be versus where it came in.

Josh: So it’s interpreted as a sign of weakness in the economy. And we've seen individual companies  this last week announce layoffs or early retirement programs. A lot of companies are repositioning right now. And of course, there's always some of that happening in the economy, but definitely a little bit of a spike from what we’ve been seeing before. A far cry from a couple of years ago when companies basically couldn't find anybody to hire.

The equation has changed and equalized out somewhat. Maybe that's a good thing; maybe there are some benefits to that as well. Overall, households are not overleveraged. I know in the media, sometimes there will be financial articles that say that the consumer is stressed and overleveraged, but the data doesn't show that. People got way overleveraged in the mid-2000s and most of that was in real estate. Back then they had “liar loans” where people could just say, “Hey, I have a paycheck for a certain amount,” and they were able to borrow more than the house was worth. Really crazy lending practices were happening back then, so the average consumer got way overleveraged. We're just not seeing that right now. I'm sure you can find people that are overleveraged, but as a whole, the US consumer is actually in a good position.

Jeremy: And that's the key. So I think the feeling in general is that during the pandemic and leading up to maybe into last year, people had a lot more cash on hand. So what we've seen and what a lot of the data tells us, is that that cash has now been spent through. And so, in terms of debt to cash ratio, what the data is telling us is that it's not like it's bad debt or excessive debt that most people have, it's honestly more in line with the regular historical average.

Josh: Yeah, Americans are really good consumers and we're going to be spending money. Which is good for the economy in the short run, but a lot of individual situations are tough because people take on too much debt and it makes their financial situation tougher than it has been.

Inflation is definitely coming down. After the pandemic, we saw a big spike, a lot of government money that got thrown into the system –a lot of money, trillions of dollars, thank God, was borrowed effectively and got pumped into the economy and sent out to consumers and companies to try to keep us from going into a recession and boost the economy. However we feel about that, bottom line is it created an inflation problem. There were just a lot of dollars out there chasing not enough goods. We also had supply chain issues happening at the same time. It created this perfect storm of way more money than could be spent. People couldn't buy some stuff and they couldn't travel. 

Now, we've seen things normalize and come much lower regarding inflation. The long-term trend is about 3% over the last 100 years or so. That's just normal inflation, about 3% per year versus the spike we saw a couple of years ago now. The Fed has been very concerned about letting off too soon. They really hit the brake when they started raising interest rates. Now the inflation numbers have come down enough that the Fed is turning their attention to “Hey, we don't want to have a recession. Or if we do, we want it to be a shallow recession. We don't want the economy to slow too much. We don't want the unemployment rate to spike too much.” They're much more concerned about that. As you see them and their commentary shift here over the next month, you can see that they're more concerned about that.

Jeremy: Yeah, and there's a bit of a disconnect from what you hear in the media versus what the data tells you on inflation. The data tells us, yes, that PCE inflation data is coming down and sitting in the right direction. But then you go to the grocery store and wonder what's going on here. Or you go to fill up your car and ask, “Where's that inflation going down from?” So remember, inflation doesn't hit every sector the same at the same time. The Fed is looking at overall what is the trend on this stuff. But let's face it, when corporations get a chance to raise prices on something, they usually do.

Josh: Yeah, that's a really good distinction, because it does depend on what you're buying. And we all need food and gas and things like that. So the average consumer has been stressed not only because of the spikes that we’ve seen before, but because we really aren't seeing a lot of price reductions. I mean, a lot of the inflation that we've experienced is the new set point essentially. And so really when we talk about inflation coming down, it's not about prices dropping. That's not happening. We're just seeing the pace of the increase change. In other words,  I don't think inflation's coming down in the sense that you're not going to see prices drop. I wouldn't hold your breath for that to happen—unless we truly do have a bad recession, and that's about the only time you see a drop in prices . Then you have deflation and that's not a good situation either. So just to be clear on our definitions here, that's kind of where we're coming from.

Jeremy: Okay, so the fundamentals behind stocks look really good. It's pretty wide across the S&P 500, and what drives stocks, value, earnings, is the company being financially sound, and that's shown in their stock price. So as we look across the broad market for the most part it's very wide across the S&P500. There is some good data behind that, which is a good feeling I think.

Josh: It's a good perspective. Remember what a stock is—it's a company, a public company in most cases, and the price of a share in that company is based off of what they expect earnings to be in the future. So even if you have a small business doing a business valuation,  they'd be looking at all the factors and what they expect earnings to be in the future. 

The value of the real estate for companies in most cases is insignificant, with office space being much less of a thing for many of these big tech companies and companies that don't really have a manufacturing presence. 

It's not a bubble. There are certain stocks that probably went up too much too fast. That’s why we want to stay diversified. We want to avoid chasing stocks and over-concentrating on getting the hot stock, the stock of the day. That's where you're sure to get hurt. If you hold on to any stock no matter what kind of company it is, eventually you're gonna get hurt if that’s all you own.

Jeremy: And that's a really hard thing to qualify in your head. Because everybody has this desire to say, “What's the next Google? What's the next NVIDIA? Do I own that? Do I not own that?” But you can get into a lot of trouble. The big dropbacks we had earlier this week and a little last week with those big companies—they had been jumping up because of AI. And now the markets are saying, “Wait a minute. We should take a deep breath. Maybe this AI thing isn't going to be as big as we think.” Trying to place bets and there's that uncertainty around it, asking, “Did we go too far? Did we not go far enough?”

Josh: And just to make everybody feel better, if you're thinking  you shouldn't have a little bit of NVIDIA or a little bit of Microsoft or whatever big company it is, if you're a diversified investor and you own stock mutual funds or stock index funds, I would be surprised if you didn't own little pieces of those companies. So again, it's a tradeoff. You're trading off making the killing and trading off getting killed. For most people, especially as they start getting closer to retirement, they definitely want that tradeoff. They do not want to see a massive drop in value just because they had too much of one stock.

 If you hear the category of large US growth, it’s largely big tech companies. That is really where most of the growth came from over the last number of years. So if you had exposure, great, I'm sure you did well, just as we did. But we definitely always want to still have those other asset areas, emerging markets, US value, US mid cap, small caps, all of those areas . And of course, rebalancing is important too so that you don't get over-concentrated. Certainly we've been doing that throughout this bull run, making sure we're rebalancing appropriately. 

So going back to politics, everybody's favorite conversation. Regardless of political party, there has never been a president where the market didn't have a big drop at some point during their presidency. Some it’s a little more, some a little less. So I don't know the outcome of the upcoming election, but most likely it’s gonna be a divided political situation.

Jeremy: I think not only just investors like gridlock. I think corporations like it. Because when you're setting corporate policy or you're trying to bet on earnings or bet on what's going to happen in the industry, it's a lot easier to say when it's gridlock. That way, you know there aren’t going to be major swings one way or another, right? Whereas if it's one way or the other,  those corporations have to take that into account and say what kind of policies, policy shifts will I have to deal with, and what kind of tax changes to the corporate rates? Tariffs, any of that stuff, all plays in.

Josh: Yeah. So if history is our guide, the market will like it if there's a  gridlock situation after this election, regardless of which party controls the presidency. Although, a divided political situation can be frustrating because nothing gets done. Sometimes the market likes that because corporations can have some certainty in knowing they're not going to see a political curveball thrown at them.

So this isn't a political webinar, but certainly politics has an impact. So if you see a deep blue outcome where you've got Harris in the presidency plus both houses in the blue, you could see some changes, especially some of the tax cuts that are set to expire in 2025 and may be allowed to expire. Likely some things would be continued on, we don't know which right now, but it certainly could impact some people. And if you see deep red, if Trump wins the election and both the House and the Senate are Republican, the deficits could increase. 

Neither party has been fiscally conservative for decades. I think the last time was when Bill Clinton was President. We had a Democrat as President and a Republican Congress, and they whipped the deficit temporarily. But historically, politicians don't like to do that. They like to spend.

Jeremy: I don't think most politicians know what a balanced budget is. It’s just, “Do I want to push the money.”

Josh: Yeah. So under Harris if you had Democrats in control of both houses, you could see a deficit reduction if they control spending and increase taxes. So these are just some possibilities, but bottom line is the most likely outcome of the election is going to be some level of gridlock. That means not a lot of change. Then even in a divided political situation, you could see people come together. That does happen from time to time. Meanwhile, if you're concerned about taxes and how it affects your planning, certainly let's talk about that. 

Now, bonds aren't as exciting as stocks, but are still important. The fixed income component of most people's portfolio long-term forecast where rates are today is a 5% long-term annual return for bonds, which historically is about spot on over the last 100 years. long-term Treasury is more like 3%. So that is back more like a normal long-term rate expectation if the Fed cuts rates  probably in September, which they almost certainly will. Some are saying that they waited too long. Time will tell, but long-term bonds should do better than short-term bonds in that environment. We talked about diversification. And depending on what happens with the economy, you might find that stocks don't do well for a while. You might find that commodities don't do well for a while if the economy goes backwards. 

And that's why we own a little bit of everything. 

Everybody has a risk number whether you know it or not. Everybody has a risk number on a scale of one to 100 and most people have no idea. Of course our clients know about it because we talk about this stuff, but most people have no idea how much risk they're actually taking in their portfolio. It’s important to get the mix correct between these different areas because there are going to be different seasons of the economy, different seasons just like there are seasons of the year and seasons of our lives. It's important to be prepared for those and have a portfolio you can live with and ride through those different environments.

Jeremy: Yeah. And then as we've been saying all along, stocks continue to be the best hedge against inflation over the long run. That's not to say that we don't want to own some bonds inside your portfolio, and that again depends on your risk level. But history pretty much tells us that stocks are that best inflation hedge.

to stay ahead of it and get that extra growth on it. How much, how heavily weighted in stocks depends on you and depends on how much volatility you're willing to have. 

Josh:  Yep. So over the long run, it's like if you’re trying to get to Australia from the US. There are different ways, but the fastest is going to be an airplane. I think that's why we always talk about stocks. Because over the long run, that's been the most reliable. Yes, there will be periods when they look really ugly. That's the price we pay to get those higher returns over the long run. Other than a little positioning overall, stocks haven’t changed a whole lot.

Jeremy: And U.S. stocks probably over international. Not saying that we'll ever get rid of international because it still serves a purpose, but right now that S&P looks pretty darn good.

Josh: It does, plus other parts of the US market as well. As to international investments, I don't think it would be wise to have none, but historically the US market has tended to outperform international investments. It's also been less volatile. But interestingly now, historically, if you had about 20% of your portfolio in international and 80% in US for your stock portion, it actually has less volatility over the long run than if you went 100% US or 100% foreign. So again, depends on the investor.

Jeremy: And then be patient, right? It's so easy to get caught up in the short term, especially in an election year. Nowadays we just tend to have big swings up and down, which kind of tends to drive you a little bit nuts to tell the truth. But just keep that focus on the long-term planning horizon. Obviously we're going to be doing things in the short term to manage it, but keep the focus on that long-term and all of this other stuff kind of fades through that.

Josh: It does. I think sometimes people log into their accounts too often. And of course it's important that you know how to do that. It’s your money, you need to be able to have that transparency. But if it's just morbidly fascinating and  causing you stress, losing sleep at night, things like that, then it probably is too much. Different institutions have done studies on this, and how there's a correlation between the more often people are logging into their accounts, the more trades they place. And oftentimes those trades aren't good ones. So we're making some broad brush statements here. always saying diversify provided having lots of asset classes covered. Again, election results rarely make that much difference in the long run. I'm sure a lot of you would debate that and say it matters personally, right, who wins? I would agree. We want to participate. But you never want to make market driven decisions off of politics. It would be a really tough way to make money over time. 

I do want to hit on tax management. You and I spend a lot of time with people on tax planning. Have somebody preparing your taxes or get a CPA involved in your planning. Tax planning can make a difference as far as looking at opportunities, rough conversions, and accelerating gains.

Jeremy: It's kind of a moving target, depending on what's happening in the market and what types of accounts and investments you have.

Josh: And what we're trying to solve for is long-term, what's the lowest lifetime rate of taxes somebody could pay. Every year Congress tends to monkey with the tax code, and politics can have shifts in that over time. So we're working off of imperfect information because we can't predict the future. Taxes do matter as far as your long-term returns. So seeking out overall good advice will help, and we hope that's us. If we're a good fit for you, that's awesome. We want to make sure that you've got a good long-term plan that you stick to. We're not just looking at investments. We're also looking at other aspects of your planning like your taxes, your estate planning, your family dynamics. We want to make sure that you hear our voice and have the opportunity to get your questions answered. The reality is the financial world is very complex and it changes constantly, so we want to make sure that we're here for you and to be your partner in that. It's always your money, and you're always involved in the planning, but we want to make sure that you’ve got a good partner that is your trusted advisor over time. We want to be on that journey with you. There are lots of different areas that you might need help with over time. We've got a great team with decades and hundreds of years of experience if you add it all up. I just had my 25th anniversary last week as an advisor. So, a lot of experience and certainly a lot of people that care about you here, wanting to do the best for you and your family. 

If there's a question you want to ask later, you can certainly do that. 

Jeremy: We do have a question. What are your thoughts about Warren Buffett recently selling half of his stocks? Could this have affected the past crash?

I think what they're getting after is that he said he had sold about half of his ownership in Apple specifically. But anytime anybody that big shakes the apple tree, something’s gonna happen.

Josh: It was just Apple. 

Jeremy: Honestly, you'd have to talk to Warren Buffett about the why behind it. He's a pretty shrewd guy, and he does look at value. The day he did it, on the front page on my news feed it said Warren Buffett sells half of his Apple. I guarantee there are millions of other people seeing that as well.

Josh: Yeah. And if you read into it, Buffett also said that there's no plan to unload the other half, that they still believe in it as a long-term holding. So I take it as Buffett and the rest of the Berkshire Hathaway professionals that manage that money are prudent investors, and if they've seen a run up in a particular stock, or maybe they're seeing other opportunities out there that could be coming up, they want to position for that. And there are decades of track record there. Not recommending Berkshire Hathaway stock just to be clear. Not saying it's bad either. You might own it already, but it’s an interesting company because it operates almost like a mutual fund because it's such a large conglomeration of different investments.

Jeremy: It's funny to me how many people watch him and then trade accordingly. And you know, he's not going to share his secrets with anybody. Of course, a lot of it comes down to fundamentals for him. I'm sure if he did say I'm selling 100% of my stake in Apple, that's a pretty big move, right? It might just be that he wants to buy something else more, which could very well be the case. I think he also sold out some other things in there, but they  weren't as big as Apple. So I could definitely see it more along the lines of an opportunity somewhere else.

Josh: Our advice is to guard yourself against what you're hearing, and be the gatekeeper of your own mind. Nobody else is going to do that for you. If we have high emotion, that doesn't often lead to good financial decisions. So we really appreciate you. We appreciate the relationships we get to have with you and your families and coworkers over a lot of years. For many of you, it's been 20 plus years. I appreciate the trust that you put in us, and of course there's going to be a lot of stuff that will happen between now and the end of the year. So we'll be talking about that with you individually. Thank you for taking the time today. Have a wonderful week, and God bless. 

We love feedback and we'd love it if you would pass it on to me directly at josh@keystonefinancial.com . Also please stay plugged in with us, get updates on episodes and help us promote the podcast by rating us and also subscribing to us on your favorite podcast service.

This episode has been prepared for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide or should not be relied upon for tax, legal or accounting advice. You should consult your own tax, legal or accounting advisors. Investment Advisory Services offered through Keystone Financial Services, an SEC registered investment advisor.