Click on the image above to watch November's Stock Market Update.
Stock Market Update 11/5/2021
What is going on with the stock market? Is the stock market still in-tact?
Steve Wolff, Managing Partner at WWM Financial, dives into what has occurred in October and where we are currently with the stock market.
Steve discusses company earnings, large cap stocks vs. small cap stocks, inflation, supply chain issues and what this holiday season could potentially look like.
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Click on the video above to watch September's Stock Market Update.
Stock Market Update 10/6/2021
In this month’s Stock Market Update, Steve Wolff (Managing Partner) summarizes what has occurred in September. This ranges from market indices, bond yields, inflation, value vs growth stocks, the Evergrande drama and supply chain issues, government funding, etc.
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Avoid making bad investment decisions, this little known report reveals 5 better ways to invest in stocks.
Learn 5 simple steps to avoid making bad investment decisions.
Steve Wolff is a Managing Partner at WWM Financial in Carlsbad California.
Steve can be reached at 760-692-5190.
Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this article are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or on any specific security. It is only intended to provide education about the financial industry. To determine which investments may be appropriate for you, consult your financial advisor prior to investing. Any past performance discussed during this program is no guarantee of future results. Any indices referenced for comparison are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. As always please remember investing involves risk and possible loss of principal capital; please seek advice from a licensed professional.
WWM Financial is an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where WWM Financial and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. No advice may be rendered by WWM Financial unless a client service agreement is in place.
In this episode: Steve Wolff discusses how excided he is about the investing opportunities in this techno-digital revolution.
Full transcription below:
Steve Wolff:
Hello everyone, this is Steve Wolff with another edition of Steve’s Stock Stories. I’m here with my
cohort, producer and friend Joscelin Magaña.
Joscelin Magaña:
How’s it going everybody?
Steve Wolff:
This is one of my favorite topics. I am so happy to be alive at this point in time, because we are going
through a technological digital revolution. This must be what it felt like to be in the industrial revolution,
when you went from the horse and buggy to cars. Of course, eventually putting men on the moon. But I
mean, all the things that happened in that time are happening now only they’re happening digitally.
Joscelin Magaña:
I feel the same first feeling when I saw the world change in a dramatic way where I was so excited. Two things that I remember surfacing, the mobile phone and the internet.
Steve Wolff:
Oh, yeah.
Joscelin Magaña:
Remember when the movie The Saint came out? That little phone was amazing. He had video on there, he got text messages. I thought, “Oh my gosh, if that could ever possibly happen.” Then we have way better phones than that now, you just throw that little toy away. Right? The other big thing that I saw was the internet. When I was in college, we were just using email at the time. There were these things called websites. I remember thinking, “Wow, we’re going to be able to buy stuff on the internet
someday.” I remember telling somebody, “Hey, this is going to be an amazing space because we’re just
going to be buying stuff on the internet.” And they’re like, “Who’s going to buy stuff on the internet?
You just go to the store. Why the hell are you going to-?” Okay. One technological advanced before this, which kind of wasn’t, but everybody thought was crazy, was when everybody started buying bottled water; but that’s a whole other subject.
Steve Wolff:
Well you talk about phones. I remember watching the movie Wall Street with Michael Douglas and he
had a mobile phone, but it was probably, I don’t know, 12 inches.
Joscelin Magaña:
Oh, yeah. They were big.
Steve Wolff:
They were huge.
Joscelin Magaña:
They were big, like a shoe box.
Steve Wolff:
Right, they were big. You could make a phone call on there today, my goodness, you could do just about everything. You can turn on your car, you can-
Joscelin Magaña:
You can turn on your sprinklers in your house, you can see your front door. It’s amazing.
Steve Wolff:
What they have in that little phone is way more powerful than what IBM first came up with when they had that first computer that took up, I don’t know, three rooms or something. With vacuum tubes and whatever, it’s just incredible.
Joscelin Magaña:
I guess where I’m going with this is that I’m as excited now as I was when mobile phones were becoming more accessible and the whole mobile phone revolution and the internet. I remember my first job we didn’t even have computers on our desks…
The markets have returned to volatility lately. Every time the market looks like it’s headed down, we see people on TV start predicting that this is the start of a down market.
So here is how we see things right now.
First, the stock market has not had a big correction for a long time, so we all know that at some point it will correct. There are a lot of global events going on that are causing angst in the markets. Russia and Ukraine is probably the greatest of these issues, but certainly not the only issue. Israel and Hamas, Isis, Iran, Italy sinking into a recession and more are all adding to investors’ fears.
On the other hand, earnings reports have been generally pretty good. On Monday morning, August 5th, Bob Pisani of CNBC reported that of the 76% of the S&P 500 companies that have reported so far for the quarter, on average, earnings are up by about 9.7% and revenues up about 5%. Those are actually fairly decent numbers.
The bears (those who believe the market is going to go down) believe the companies’ earnings are going to slow down. The bulls (those who believe the market is going to go up) say the companies’ earnings are strong, the interest rates are still low, so stocks are the place to be.
The bears say that rising interest rates will be a competitor to dividend paying stocks so stocks will get sold off. The bulls say that if interest rates go up, then bonds will go down in price, so you want to remain in stocks.
So the pessimists and the optimists are both trying to figure out where the market should be, hence the volatility. For the year, the stock market has been hovering around the flat line, with some months good and some months bad. So there has not been a real direction one way or the other.
We have heard several prognosticators say it looks like we are heading for a growth rate of about 3% to 4% in the U.S. for the year. If that growth rate is accurate, that is normally not the underpinning of a major bear market. But that does not mean there can’t be corrections along the way.
As we have said many times, no one knows with certainty where the market is going to go. We certainly don’t know if the bulls or the bears are going to be right in the short term. So we say that now is a good time to look at your portfolio, make sure you are in the proper asset allocation, and then be sure it is something that will not cause you to panic if the market goes down by 15 or 20% (which is a normal market correction). As most of our clients have heard us say, it is panicking out of the market at the bottom that causes the most damage to investors’ returns.
If you are not sure of where you are or just want to review your account, please call us. We are always here for you.
