The Seaside Blog

As we bid farewell to another year, it's time to take stock of the financial landscape and chart a course for success in 2024. After the turbulence of the 2022 bear market, the stock market was in recovery mode during the first half of the year, offering hope for investors. However, after peaking in late July, the market went down for three straight months on news of inflation, turbulence overseas and the economy in general. Just when it seemed like things were not improving, we had a fantastic November and December giving us a nice market increase moving into the new year.

As we move through 2023, the global economy has been experiencing some significant changes. Unfortunately, one of these has been the failure of several prominent U.S. banks; specifically, Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic Bank. Understandably, these failures have caused many retired or soon-to-be retired Americans to question whether they can rely on their banking partners for the long haul. This is an important topic, so let’s discuss it.

At some point over the past year, the financial media’s inflation coverage transitioned from, “Will this high inflation persist?” to, “Here’s how to cope with inflation that’s here to stay!” It seems some investors have resigned themselves to a new normal of high inflation following decades of below-average consumer price changes.

Most of us have gone through volatile markets before, and maybe even a bear market or two. This might also be your first time experiencing a market cycle such as this one. Either way we want to remind all of you that this is a normal type of behavior for markets.

If you are feeling a little uncertain about the markets you are not alone. The S&P 500’s April return of -8.7% was the 14th worst month since 1970. You would have to go back to March 2020 (the very beginning of the pandemic induced Bear market) and September 2008 (the height of the financial crisis) to find worse months.

On March 16th, the Federal Reserve signaled it will be raising interest rates by a quarter point. The federal-funds rate will be increasing from near zero to somewhere around.25%. This is the first time since 2018 that the Fed has increased interest rates.....