Transcript
Hello everybody, welcome to Friday. The S&P 500 was actually down .3% today. But again, luckily for us, we did better than that. The overall average rate of return across all of our accounts was actually up .3%, exactly opposite of the market. Always fun when that happens, you know, especially again, since we don’t have you know, full exposure to the stock market, we often do better than the S&P when the market falls, because we have, you know, a big chunk of bonds that don’t fall as fast, it’s a lot harder to beat the market on the upside. I think one of the reasons that, you know, we’re doing that on a fairly regular basis is just because we’ve got the pieces in the market that everybody else seems to want at this point in time, the Clean Energy, the Online Retail, the Big Tech stocks, the Innovative Tech stocks, et cetera. So that’s written in Advanced Healthcare, actually, which did really well today, too. So, you know, we’ve got those components that are doing well, you know, we have some broad market exposure ourselves. So you know, it’s just part of our portfolio, and always has been. And, you know, we just want to, you know, be happy right now that things are going really, really well for us.
I’d like to talk a little bit about 2021. And this is really interesting, for me, I was thinking about today: I cannot think of another year, that has more things lined up, like this year has lined up, for possible good results. I mean, the combination of things I’ve just never seen before, you know, we’ve had zero interest rates before, which is usually a good thing. And so that’s here. But this, this situation with this pent up demand, where we saved a bunch of extra money last year, you know, as a country, we could probably couldn’t spend it as much as we wanted. And, you know, the ability to have that come rushing out into the economy could be kind of fantastic. Vaccine has to work. So, you know, that’s going to be a big piece that we look at as far as that goes. And then you’ve got this scenario where they’re putting out massive amounts of stimulus. And you know, what they’re talking about in Congress is just one piece of what’s being put out with the support from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury and what not, it’s much bigger than it looks like.
It’s needed for the economy, I believe it’s needed for sections of the economy is needed for the unemployed, et cetera. But it’s going to be like putting rocket fuel, you know, in the rocket. This is the year I’ve never seen anything like it. One of the things I always talk about is what I call the outside influence, these are the things that can happen. And last year was a classic example. We’re marching along, all of a sudden, there’s a global virus that wasn’t exactly expected as far as that goes. So that can always happen. There’s always this potential for something coming in from the outside.
But I think if 2021, you know, lays out the way that it could, I be surprised to see, you know, it not do quite well. There are some pieces we have to watch for. Does the vaccine work? Okay. So, you know, are there mutations or issues and things that we have to deal with there? Number two, is, you know, do interest rates go up enough to track money away, you know, the 10-year treasuries at 1.1%. Right now, it has grown from .7%. But that’s not enough to attract money away from the stock market that’s making so much, but you never know, you know, that could get to be higher number, and maybe it would, so we watch that. And then you know, the last thing that I really want to watch is kind of just the bubble, you know, can things get so crazy on the upside that things just, you know, end up kind of selling off to get back down to something kind of normal. And that’s a possibility, too.
So I am fairly optimistic with all of those pieces. But my outlook right now is that, you know, we’re in a great spot, we’ve had a great year, it’s just the beginning. And so we’ve already got a good start to the year, which I really like. But I do think it’s really important to have some type of a down market strategy here with with how much it’s run so far. And so we had, I think, a pretty good down market strategy during the virus in February, March. We rotated out we found things that didn’t fall as much those types of things. I was I was very pleased with what happened there. And I really focused on that recovery. And it worked. And we outperformed the market, you know, in the recovery by a lot, which I was very excited with.
But when I look at what’s happening here, this is why we’re putting in these Stop Losses. And so, you know, if I look back at previous bubbles, that’s that’s the strategy I think is the best way, you know, let your winners run. It’s really important to kind of let them come up, let them go. Let them go. You know, we’ll watch them real closely, but then put in some little stop losses and just keep moving them up as those pieces continue to run. And I think that would be, you know, a good strategy also. So we’ve got that in place.
Again, Stop Losses are not, you know, always perfect, there’s all kinds of issues that can happen there, got most of those Stop Losses in the IRA type accounts, I’ve gotten less in the non-IRA type accounts because of taxation, and I’ve had to move them farther away. Because I really don’t want to create a big taxable event. Unless, you know, things are really falling apart. It’s better to have, you know, some profits then, you know, watch them all disappear. So that that’s what we’re looking at, you know, for those catastrophic situations. So, really exciting. Great week, great year, great potential year. Best potential year I’ve ever seen in my 35 years, I’ll just say that flat out, you know, who knows what’s going to happen, but in terms of the pieces that we all look at as professional, you know, investors, wow, it’s really amazing. As far as that goes. And then now we’ve got some protection in place, too, which I think is great.
I will mention one thing, you know, if you have friends, or relatives or co workers, who are not maybe in the same position that you are, you know, they’re not capturing as much of the upside is we are, they don’t have some type of a down market protection plan, please, you know, let them you know, know that we would be willing to talk to them and help them out, if so desired. So, I want to thank everybody very much. Great week. You know, it was only four days, but it really, really was fun to watch and look forward to talking to you next week. Thank you very much.