It is crazy to think that it is July and we are already halfway through this year. During this point of the year we always believe that it is important to reflect on the events of the last 6 months and on the progress of all of our clients long term plans. We also find it valuable to review our long-term investing principals that guide us when working with clients and building financial plans.

The Ideas That Guide Us

• You and I are long-term, goal-focused, planning-driven owners of broadly diversified portfolios of enduringly successful companies. As such, we act continuously on our plan, as opposed to reacting episodically to current events and conditions.
• We’re convinced that the economy cannot be consistently forecast, nor the market consistently timed. We infer from this that our best chance to capture something close to the full long-term return of equities is to ride out their frequent, sometimes significant, but historically always temporary declines.
• These will continue to be the bedrock convictions that inform our investment policy, as we pursue your most cherished financial goals together.

Current Commentary

• After declining sharply for most of 2022, the S&P 500 ended the year at 3,840.
• As the year turned, it seemed as if the economy might well be in a no-win situation. Either the Federal Reserve would tighten credit conditions enough to stamp out inflation, thereby plunging us into recession. Or it would relent, avoiding recession but permitting inflation to burn on. In either case, we were assured that corporate earnings must be about to decline significantly, boding ill for “the stock market.”
• To this apparently intractable situation, the first half of 2023 added three new and potentially critical uncertainties: the specter of U.S. sovereign default, a wave of bank failures that seemed to threaten the banking system itself, and a renewed outbreak of fear surrounding the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency.
• Yet after enduring that relentless onslaught of crises real and imagined, the S&P 500 closed out the first half of 2023 at 4,450.48, up 16.38)%. We are almost tempted to say, “You read that right,” and leave you to draw your own conclusions. Instead, we will just repeat Peter Lynch’s timeless maxim: “The real key to making money in stocks is not to get scared out of them.”
• In that sense, these six months represent for us-and we hope for you-a successful investing career in microcosm. You and I did all that can be asked of us: amid well-nigh universal pessimism, we didn’t get scared out.
• Rather, we stayed focused on our goals and on our long-term plan, with confidence that the managements of the companies we own were husbanding our capital with diligence, while they sought out new and potentially greater opportunities amid the adversity.

Everything that happened (and didn’t happen) in the first half of 2023 turned out not to matter much. What mattered was that together we chose not to react. Is it possible that a lifetime of patient, disciplined investment success is just that simple? I certainly believe it can be, and I sincerely hope you do too.

Thank you, as always, for being my clients. It is a privilege to serve you here at Adams Wealth Partners- we LOVE what we do!

Any opinions are those of the author and not necessarily those of Raymond James. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index of 500 widely held stocks that is generally considered representative of the U.S. stock market. Keep in mind that individuals cannot invest directly in any index, and index performance does not include transaction costs or other fees, which will affect actual investment performance. Individual investor’s results will vary. Past performance is not a guide to future performance, future returns are not guaranteed, and a loss of capital might occur. All investing involves risk, and you may incur a profit or loss of capital. There is no assurance any investment strategy will be successful. All information, data and analysis provided in this report is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. This report does not constitute a personal recommendation or take into account the particular investment objectives, financial situations, or needs of individual clients. The foregoing information has been obtained from sources considered to be reliable, but we do not guarantee that it is accurate or complete; it is not a statement of all available data necessary for making an investment decision and it does not constitute a recommendation.