Announcer:
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, and Happy New Year.
David Nelson:
Happy New Year to you too, Brandy. Thank you.
Brandy Auterson-Hurst:
So now that 2024 is underway, there are plenty of predictions as to what we’ll see this year. What are your thoughts?
David Nelson:
Well, this is always a fun time of the year as far as Wall Street loves to throw out these projections and it draws attention and they certainly enjoy that. Looking back as far as on ’23, I guess is probably a pretty good example of sometimes you could view it as meaningless as far as predictions. I brought along a chart that’s kind of illustrating this as far as looking at the market. So the blue line is looking at the S&P, and the yellow line is looking at the predictions as far as the average analysts, as far as what they’re predicting. What we see here is quite a gap between reality and what actually they were projecting. And so again, we don’t put a lot of stock in it. There can be some limited value to it because we like to hear what others are thinking. But at the end of the day, again, this visual right here shows they were predicting essentially nothing as far as performance for the S&P, and in reality, the S&P was up, give or take, 25% this past year.
Brandy Auterson-Hurst:
Okay, so what does this mean for viewers thinking about their investments?
David Nelson:
Well, again, analysts predicting pretty much the same as far as very, very small movement. What we like to tell people in situations as far as talking about money and making decisions is, “Be flexible.” It’s probably the best advice I could give individuals as far as looking at their money and trying to make the decisions. The predictions are generally speaking pretty meaningless, but being flexible is very key as far as to making money long term.
Brandy Auterson-Hurst:
If you missed any of our discussion, we’ll make it available for you on ourquadcities.com.
Investing involves risk. Depending on the types of investments, there may be varying degrees of risk. Investors should be prepared to bear loss, including total loss of principal.
Indices mentioned are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly.
The S&P 500 Index is a market-capitalization-weighted index of 500 leading publicly traded companies in the U.S.