What a wild month. It felt more like a year.
In the last month alone, we had an assassination attempt on the weird and befuddled 78-year-old Epstein-loving corrupt rapist & felon seeking to destroy democracy--ironically, attempted by a fellow gun-loving Republican--along with President Biden selflessly bowing out of the presidential race to allow for future President Kamala Harris.
Thank god there are only 97 days until the election and I have the Olympics to distract me.
The markets were equally wild. Although the S&P eked out a small gain, it gave up a much larger gain. It initially climbed steeply through mid-month only to give it all back by the end.
With that in mind, it's important to remember that, just as perception is reality, *perspective* is perception. Change your perspective and you change your reality.
Remember the Dead Poet’s Society?
“I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we should constantly look at things in a different way. See, the world looks very different from up here… Just when you think you know something, you have to look at it in another way."
In that regard, your perspective looking at your returns daily will leave you whipsawed at best. Keeping an eye on them monthly, as many of us do here, is obviously fine. But what matters most to me are yearly returns and, to that end, I’m a fan of year-to-date returns.
So with that in mind, it’s noteworthy that our market returns (i.e., excluding dividends) are about 13% YTD (versus the S&P being about 14%). And, since our annual dividends are about 1% higher than the S&P's, we're slightly outpacing the market on a total return basis.
That’s excellent. Indeed, my portfolio could do absolutely nothing for the rest of the year—or even lose a few percentage points—and I’d be happy with double-digit returns on an annual basis.
For me, perspective is everything. |