Brandy Auterson-Hurst:
To you by NelsonCorp Wealth Management. It’s now time for For Your Money. We’re joined by David Nelson, CEO of NelsonCorp Wealth Management. Welcome back, David.
David Nelson:
Thank you, Brandy.
Brandy Auterson-Hurst:
So it seems like financial markets have been pretty resilient in 2023. How are you looking at that?
David Nelson:
Well, we came into the year with the experts predicting that tough times for this year and the performance of the financial markets, as most people have probably noticed, it’s been choppy. But the choppiness has certainly led to higher levels, markets have cooperated so far this year as far as trending upward.
The chart I brought along today it’s one of the tools we use. The blue line, is looking at the S&P 500. So in other words, the market. And the red is looking at the moves on a monthly basis, and the higher the levels are, the more volatility there is as far as in that given period. What’s interesting, again, this is a monthly gauge trying to show the size of the moves. And as folks can probably tell, some of these moves were quite large as far as during certain periods of extreme volatility, 2020 was probably one of the bigger ones. We had it in 2015, et cetera. And then we saw it in 2022, extreme volatility there. But things have really calmed down and calmed down pretty dramatically as folks can see on the far right.
Brandy Auterson-Hurst:
All right. So how can this help investors as we progress this year?
David Nelson:
Well, I think probably the most important thing that comes out of this is volatility. When you’re in periods of high volatility and things start trending lower, as far as volatility is concerned, what you typically are going to find is markets perform best in that environment. Can’t say for sure, but it certainly is a good sign as far as seeing this volatility get tamped down a little bit from the levels that we’ve been at.
Brandy Auterson-Hurst:
All right, David, as always, thanks for joining us today.
David Nelson:
Thank you.