• 📈 The Everything Rally – Every asset class is positive: US and international stocks, US and international bonds, real estate, commodities, Bitcoin, and cash.

• 🎃 Choppy October? – Heading into October, the S&P 500 is up 20.8% for the year.

Investing / Stock Market

• 💵 Warren Buffett Sold Some Apple Shares. Should You? – An article from me about taking some chips off the table, especially when one position is 50%+ of your portfolio.

• 🤩 Best Week of the Year – In September the S&P 500 had its best week of the year, up 4% in 5 days.

• 📉 Rate Cuts – They usually lead to good 1-year returns.

• 💰 A Great Start – From Charlie Bilello: “The 20% gain in the S&P 500 is the best start to a year since 1997 and 17th best in history.”

• 🔥 Unprofitable Companies – We’ve all heard about startups that aren’t profitable. Many publicly traded companies aren’t either (especially the smaller ones):

• 🌎 Global Stock Performance – Taiwan, Argentina, and Turkey lead the world with the best performing stock markets this year.

Jobs & Economy

• 🐢 Economic Summary – It’s hard to summarize our economy better than this (from Torsten Slok of Apollo):

• 🔮 Interest Rate Expectations – The market expects interest rates to decline through 2025.

• 🚛 Moving Patterns for Young, High Earners – SmartAsset ranked states based on the net migration of young households (ages 26 to 35) that earned at least $200,000 a year.

• Software Engineer Job Postings in Decline – Postings for software development jobs are down more than 30% since February 2020.

• 🏢 New Business Formation Up Big – The number of small businesses being formed had been relatively flat for decades. But four months into the pandemic, the rate of new small businesses spiked and hasn’t let up:

• 🚙 Car Insurance Up 50% in 5 years.

Housing

• 📈 Inventory Surge – In August, the number of homes for sale jumped 35.8% year-over-year, marking the 10th consecutive month of rising inventory.

• 🏠 Everyone’s Favorite Investment – A new survey showed that real estate remains the top choice for long-term investment.

• 📊 Great Returns – Why housing is most people’s favorite investment is clear: The returns are rarely negative, it offers a lot of tax benefits, it allows for a lot of leverage, and it’s in DNA of America as owning a home is part of the American Dream.

• ⛈️ Homeowners Insurance Costs – About 60% of homeowners pay less than $1,500 per year for insurance.

Life

• 🚘 Searching For a New Car? – Check out Real Car Tips. They have great information about lease or purchase deals available from all the big brands.

• 🚶‍♂️‍➡️Life Path – The image below is a nice way to think your past and your future.

Somewhat related to the life path image above:

“You can’t change your past, but you can reframe it.

Find the lesson in it. Find the opportunity in it. Pull the teachable moment out of it and share with others.

You can’t choose your history, but you can choose the story you tell about it.”

– James Clear

As always, please reach out if you have any questions or would like to connect.

The Important Point: Buffett has called Apple “probably the best business I know in the world.” Despite this, he took gains off the table, offering lessons for individual investors:

1. Portfolio Rebalancing: Buffett’s move reduced Apple’s outsized impact on Berkshire’s value. When one stock dominates your portfolio (20%, 30%, or 50%+), it’s worth asking: How much is too much?

2. Taxes: Buffett noted Berkshire is paying a 21% federal tax on its Apple gains, down from higher historical rates. He thinks higher taxes could return, something individual investors should factor in to their own decisions.

3. Valuation: Apple’s growth has made it expensive across metrics like price-to-earnings and price-to-sales. Buffett’s sale does not mean a lack of confidence in the company, the stock is simply not a discount anymore.

The Bottom Line: Despite a sizable sale, Buffett praised Apple at Berkshire’s 2024 meeting and plans to keep it as Berkshire’s largest position. His decision highlights the importance of strategic portfolio management—not a loss of faith in Apple’s long-term prospects.

Below are a few interesting personal finance pieces from August, plus a quick note about September so far:

The S&P 500 is down about 4% just a few days into September. From an investor perspective, September and October are on average the worst months (but still up 50% of the time).

If you’re investing for the long term, there is nothing to worry about these short-term declines.

Here are a couple charts to help put it in perspective:

• Global Returns – So far this year the US and international markets have done well:

• Best Performing Stocks – Within the US, NVIDIA is the best performer this year (more on NVIDIA below):

• Worst Performing Stocks – On the flip side, Intel (which is in the same industry as our best performer NVIDIA) is the worst performer this year:

• New Jobs – Most people are working in jobs that didn’t exist in 1940.

• Tech Job Postings – Tech job postings are down ~50% since 2020:

• Headcount is Down – With interest rates up, venture capital funding is harder to raise. As a result, startups are running leaner across all stages.

• VCs Love AI – “AI and machine learning startups made up nearly half of all investment, up from 15% in 2017.”

• VC Funding – Venture Capital investment peaked back in 2021.

• Large Companies on AI – Speaking of AI investment, it’s interesting to read what the big companies are saying about that expense:

Housing

• Interest Rates – have dropped to a 15-month low.

• Revised Home Buying/Selling Rules – Starting August 17, new rules were rolled out that slightly changed the way Realtors get paid. Here’s an overview:

• • • How It Worked Before: A 5%–6% fee was typically paid by the home seller and split between the seller’s agent and the buyer’s agent.
  • • For example, if a home sold for $1,000,000 the seller would be responsible for paying $60,000 (6%) to both agents.

• • • How It Works Now: As a buyer, you have to sign a contract with the agent representing you before they show you a property.
  • • The contract outlines the compensation your agent will receive, and is designed to inform buyers that they are responsible for paying their realtor if the seller chooses not to cover the cost.

• Home Sales Are Down – Housing activity is at a low.

• Home Price Appreciation – Prices are up across the country. The Southeast looks to have done the best:

• Is NVIDIA Overvalued? – If you’re interested in the share price of NVIDIA, I highly recommend this article.

• Apple’s Valuation – Apple’s price to sales ratio is quite high.

Quote of the Month

“Rather than spend time trying to add more years to our lives, what we should be doing is adding more life to our years…by doing that, I think it will have the surprising effect of helping us live longer.”

– Ellen Langer

As always, please reach out if you have any questions or would like to connect.

I’d like to inform you of a data breach involving a company called National Public Data.

This company is involved in running background checks, and a few months ago they were hacked. As a result, a significant amount of personal information – including Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth – was stolen and released publicly.

You can read about the hack in this article.

To see if your information was compromised, click here.

Whether your data was affected or not, I recommend placing a freeze on your credit. This is free, won’t affect your credit score, and should only take 10-15 minutes. Just set up an account with Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax.

Here’s a nice explainer from Equifax on how a freeze helps:

Please reach out if you have any questions or need further assistance.

Below are a few interesting personal finance pieces from the past month, starting off the with volatility piece.

• Low Volatility? – Through most of 2024 there had been very little movement in the stock market. That changed around the middle of July.

• But since July 10th, the Nasdaq 100 – an index of large tech companies – has decreased by ~13%, while the S&P 500 is down about 8%. It appears volatility has returned:

• What was A Great Run – As of July 16th, the S&P 500 had risen during 28 of the past 37 weeks.

• Stock Picking is Hard – Over this time, only about 20% of individual stocks have outperformed the S&P 500 index:

• Tons of Funds – Despite the difficulty of being an active investor, many try.

• President vs. Stock Market – With the presidential election coming up, I wanted to share the chart below. The way I interpret it is that the stock market tends to go up over time, regardless of who is in power.

Jobs & Economy

• America’s Female Workforce is Expanding – “The share of women aged 25-54 that are working or looking for work reached an all-time high of 78.1% in May…meaning that women now hold a record 79 million jobs across the US.”

• Q2 GDP – In good news for the US economy, “Gross domestic product — the value of all goods and services produced in the US…rose at an annual rate of 2.8% for April through June.

• Strong Economy – Below is a nice snapshot of US economic indicators. These are great results across the board.

• Soft Landing – This is a big deal. Many predicted that bringing down the inflation rate, and bringing up interest rates, would cause a recession.

• More Good News – This stat is hard to believe: In 2000, 75% of adults held $10,000 or less in wealth.

• Inflation is Down, but Prices Aren’t – “The typical household is spending $925 more a month to purchase the same goods and services as three years ago, according to Moody’s Analytics.”

Housing

• Price Drops – “Roughly one in five (19.8%) homes for sale in June had a price cut — the highest level of any June on record.”

• Closed Homes Sales – The number of homes that sold in June increased in just one metro: San Jose, CA (1.8% growth).

• Interesting Housing Charts – There are a lot of great charts about the housing market in this report from Apollo. If you’re interested in real estate I highly recommend it.

• Commercial Property Foreclosures – A bad sign in the commercial real estate market:

Taxes

• Inherited IRA Rules Clarified – If you inherited an IRA from someone who was not your spouse, you may be familiar with the 10-year rule for required distributions. The IRS has clarified those rules to the following:

• Gas Tax – “California pumps out the highest state gas tax rate of 77.9 cents per gallon (cpg), followed by Illinois (66.5 cpg) and Pennsylvania (62.2 cpg).

• Does Your State Tax Social Security? – While Californians pay a lot of tax on their gasoline, at least the state does not tax Social Security:

“Wealth is like seawater: the more we drink, the thirstier we become.”

– Arthur Schopenhauer

As always, please reach out if you have any questions or would like to connect.