By LouAnn Schulfer, AWMA®, AIF®
Accredited Wealth Management Advisor^SM
Accredited Investment Fiduciary®

I had a client call me the other day who was concerned about the market’s future performance.  His accounts are actively managed and he has a long term time horizon, supporting his allocation to market based investments.  He was concerned that we are at all-time market highs on the S&P 500 index.

Investors get worried when they hear gaudy media commentaries that we’ve hit “all-time highs” which lead the listener to conclude that if we are at all-time highs, we can’t go any higher and may even fall off a cliff.  The truth is, the S&P 500 and other market indexes have continually hit all-time highs and climbed even higher off those all-time highs, since the inception of markets.  Sure, there is short-term volatility and sometimes markets go sideways for a period of time, but investing is a long-term endeavor.  Pull up any chart of a market index over a long-term time horizon and you’ll see an upward sloping graph.  Each time the line on the graph climbs higher than a previous high, we are at another all-time high.  That’s the way markets have worked over time and why investors stay invested.

2020 has been a year of acute market volatility thus far, and there have been nervous investors along the way both when markets are falling as well as when markets are rising.   Just remember the long-term context when you hear again and again, that we’ve hit another all-time market high.

LouAnn Schulfer is co-owner of Schulfer & Associates, LLC Wealth Management and can be reached at (715) 343-9600 or louann.schulfer@lpl.com.  www.SchulferAndAssociates.com
Securities and advisory services offered through LPL Financial, a Registered Investment Advisor.  Member FINRA/SIPC.