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4 Your Money is brought to you by NelsonCorp Wealth Management.
Brandy Auterson-Hurst:
It’s now time for 4 Your Money. We’re joined by David Nelson, CEO of NelsonCorp Wealth Management. Welcome back David.
David Nelson:
Thank you Brandy, appreciate it.
Brandy Auterson-Hurst:
So we’ve talked about various measures of sentiment over the past year. Could you share what you are looking at currently on that front?
David Nelson:
So sentiment, I should probably start there. And sentiment is kind of a fancy way of saying how people are feeling about something. And the one we’re going to discuss today looks at business sentiment.
And so, what we find is that it’s improved some as far as the sentiment, as far as pertaining to kind of how companies are viewing tomorrow. But the concerning part is when we look at the data as far as out three months and six months as far as spending, as far as what they’re wanting to do and planning on doing, number one and number two as far as hiring. So both of these have softened from what we’ve seen as far as in the past.
The chart I brought along today gives kind of a nice visual. It’s a blue line here, just showing over a number of years as far as how the small business optimism index, fancy way of saying what are the businesses out there thinking in terms of. And what we see here is that it looks like it’s peaked in ’18. And what we see from there is pretty much it’s been falling since, a fair amount of volatility that we’ve seen, especially in 2020 and 2021. And so, again, these are things to be aware of and certainly when we see optimism as far as moving as quickly as it has in recent times here, it’s certainly something to pay attention to.
Brandy Auterson-Hurst:
Okay, so what does this mean for viewers looking to put investment dollars to work?
David Nelson:
Yeah, should I be investing, shouldn’t I be investing? That’s always the great question. I would say here, again, what we’re seeing is that they’re starting to dial things back. Probably not a good sign as far as for stocks long-term.
Brandy Auterson-Hurst:
If you missed any of our discussion, we’ll make it available for you on ourquadcities.com.