Quarterly Market Update

I'm excited to share today's podcast because it's something I have wanted to try for a while. Something I loved about working at Merrill Lynch, was receiving quarterly market updates from our research teams. The updates would review what happened in the global economy in the previous quarter and provided insight as to what you should focus on for the upcoming quarter.I invited my friend Matt Reiner from Wela to come back on the show and share his company's quarterly market update. You may remember Matt from the Halloween podcast episode, Investing for the Zombie Apocalypse. I hope to share more episodes like this in the future, so I hope you let me know what you think.

What are we drinking?

Matt -- Old Fashioned

Shannon -- Pickletini (pairs wonderfully with a burger)

Podcast Summary

Matt likes to do quarterly reviews because they give everybody some hope for the future and recaps what we just experienced in the financial world.
There were three headlines for 2015: Oil, The Fed, and Volatility
Two headlines for 2016: The Election Year and Energy

2015 RECAP

The oil & gas market has fallen drastically and has affected the market as a whole.
2015 was all about when the Fed was going to raise interest rates as they’ve been expected to raise rates for five years.

2016 INSIGHTS

This year you’re likely to see the benefits of the lower prices of oil across the economy and across companies.
2016 is going to be all about the election.
The 4th year of a second term president tends to bode well for the stock market, but there will still be some volatility.
If the markets would start believing that nothing gets done in Washington and not trade on election or political news, investors would be a lot happier.
When Washington gets out of the way, the markets tend to do better.

LOOK OUT FOR:

Election drama impacting the markets
The US GDP climbing
The Fed increasing rates but not as much as people believe they will
The healthcare sector as a whole
ISIS to continue to be a hot topic. The cybersecurity sector stands to benefit from this and grow exponentially.
More corporate cash activity

TAKEAWAYS

Understand that the fall in oil prices doesn’t cause recessions.
The 18th month mark after a fall in energy tends to be the turning point when you start to see the benefit of lower oil prices.
In 2015, the S&P 500 saw a gain of 1.4% (total return).
If you missed the three best days for the market (which tend to happen after the worst days) in 2015, your return would have gone from 1.4% down over 7% which is incredible for just three days.
This proves that staying true to a longer-term strategy and not letting your emotions get in the way of that strategy is key to investing in terms of volatility.
Set the right portfolio in place, and it will do the work for you; it’s all a matter of patience!
You win more often in the market than you lose, and you to start to lose when you start trying to guess.
It’s easy to get out of the market, but it’s so much harder to get back in.