December 2022
401(k) Allocation

There are trades.

Santa Claus rally?  Well, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, may have finally given us the signal that markets need to calm some of the volatility we’ve seen in stock prices all year long.  We have said that once the inflation numbers began to show signs of continued improvement, that could be the catalyst for slowing the pace of interest rate increases.  This is in fact what he announced at his press briefing as we headed into December and expectations look like a .5% increase for their December meeting, an improvement from the .75% increase.  Markets have rallied around the news – at least temporarily – and so we are adding a small bit of risk back to all asset allocations.  In fact, … we are adding to developed international stocks!  In a rising or high interest rate environment, the dollar strengthens, and this proves a powerful headwind for both commodities as well as anything non-dollar denominated, such as international stocks.  Now that the trend on rates appears to be cooling here in the US, the dollar strength is relaxing and that is providing some positive momentum for both asset gold and international stocks.  We will see if that momentum can continue past Christmas!

As always, please let us know if you need help with rebalancing your 401K and if we have not yet created a custom ‘de-coder ring’ for you, please reach out to us and we can put that together for you.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah and lets all hope for a positive finish to a crazy year!

If you have questions, please contact us.

MARKET UPDATE
FINANCIAL PLANNING
FRAUD ALERT
TAX PLANNING

To download the December 2022 Newsletter: CLICK HERE

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