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For many years, market participants have been closely following every statement made by the Federal Reserve Chairperson and every data point used by the Fed to guide its decisions. However, it has become increasingly tiresome. While monetary policy, including interest rates, is undeniably important, the daily fluctuations caused by inflation reports and their potential influence on the Fed's interest rate decisions have become excessive...

When we look back at 2023, we’ll remember it as a banner year for markets. Stocks were up across the board and even bonds produced a solid return. A rough 3rd quarter that led to a rally in November and December pulled markets ahead for a fantastic finish to 2023.

It's many folks' favorite season! Fall brings apple cider, donuts, football, and of particular importance to the Carter family- hunting season. The changing of the seasons on the calendar mirrors the changing of the figurative seasons we have witnessed here at FSG.

Following a prosperous first quarter, the market continued to perform well in the second quarter. Most sectors of the market performed well with a few, albeit notable, exceptions. Let's take a deeper look into interest rates, global diversification, and what is to come.

In 2019, I wrote the article you see below. At the time, I was extremely excited about the prospect of ETFs beginning to trade at zero cost, and frankly, I still am. Free trading of ETFs (and stocks in many cases) is a huge advancement for investors and gives us, as your financial advisor, additional tools to manage your portfolio. Below is a quick refresher on the history of ETFs, which explains what happened in 2019 and why I was excited about it. I have added additional commentary to the original article in italics.

Anyone can seem like a good financial advisor when markets are doing well. The expectation investors have when investing in capital markets is to make money, so when expectations are easy to meet, the bar tends to be set pretty low. However, it’s downturns in the markets that separate great financial advisors from mediocre ones. It’s times like these when people may wonder what their financial advisor is doing during this bear market.

In this article, we talk about the portfolio change we recently made. We also give our views on the news of the Silicon Valley Bank bank failure and, subsequently, the failure of Signature Bank.

By no measure was 2022 a good year for investors. Looking into 2023, there are three issues that will impact the market: The Fed and Interest Rates, Ukraine/Russia/Energy, China/Supply Chains.