Approaching retirement is an exciting time for most people. Spending time thinking how you will live out your “golden years” is something that we all look forward to.

You’ve worked hard for many years to accumulate and grow your wealth. Now is the time that you depend on that wealth to get through retirement, which could last 30 years or more!

Ideally, you want your portfolio to start producing enough dividend and interest income to fill the gap between income from social security and any possible pensions you may have and what your expenses will be during retirement.

The stock market and economy continue to show greater strength than predicted. Back in late August of 23, John Lui our CIO wrote “As the US economy, corporate profits and inflation trends improve, the S&P 500 will continue to rise, which will force the sell siders to move to the middle of the boat (neutral) or right side of the boat (bullish) and again revising upward their S&P 500 target prices”. John’s call was very prescient as the market has risen spectacularly since early October and now the sell siders have moved to the middle and right side of the boat. In fact, this morning (April 1 – both Goldman Sachs and HSBC have raised their price targets for the S&P 500 again) (Bloomberg).

Momentum trading is the opposite of "buy low and sell high"; momentum traders "buy high and sell higher" (hopefully). I have in the past sounded the alarm when momentum stocks/momentum investing have become the primary driver of the stock market with prior writings such as "Nachos Para Machos" and I do so again.

A recession has not occurred as our economy is just not that interest rate sensitive coming out of the pandemic…

A New year, a new financial you!! As we are still early in the new year, now would be a good time to make some financial planning resolutions.

How quickly things change! As I write this update, we are within a hair of the all-time highs for the S&P 500.

After experiencing an extended ultra-low interest rate environment from the 2008 Financial crisis through early last year, interest rates have now moved significantly higher. Here's something to consider..