I was reminded of the power of this truth recently after being introduced to a hilarious—but all-too-close-to-home—clip from the TV show, Silicon Valley. For maximum enjoyment, I suggest you pause for two minutes and watch it to avoid the spoiler to follow (and note there is a bit of choice language involved if little ears are nearby)…

But in the case that viewing isn’t an option, I’ll summarize in this week’s post below and suggest how “the humble inquiry” provides us with a framework for understanding people better, at work and at home.

Also this week: Tony’s market update, Don’t Fear New Highs, offers a timely and reassuring read on what new market records actually mean.

Thanks for joining us, and of course, Happy Mother’s Day, Mom, and all the moms out there!

Tim Maurer, CFP®, RLP®

Partner

SIGNATUREFD

In this Net Worthwhile® Weekly you'll find:

• Financial LIFE Planning:

  • The Bear Is Sticky With Honey

• Quote O' The Week:

  • Fran Lebowitz

• Weekly Market Update:

  • Don’t Fear New Highs

Financial LIFE Planning

The Bear Is Sticky With Honey

And The Humble Art Of The Clarifying Question

If you haven’t seen the clip, the scene opens with an apparently important individual—Gavin—struggling to sweeten his hot tea. As he’s walking briskly to a waiting car, he’s discussing a current project, and then just before he closes the door and speeds away, he says, “Oh, and the bear is sticky with honey.”

Cut to a room full of earnest corporate minions in a conference room with a whiteboard, trying to dissect and discern the deeper meaning of the cryptic observation of their sage. It gets increasingly ridiculous and funny, of course, before another run-in with Gavin reveals that the plastic bear container of honey he uses for his tea has become sticky—and is in need of replacement.

(Ahhhh…)

We laugh, but we do this all the time in big ways and small. One financial advisor told me a story about an interaction with one of his favorite clients. The client asked the advisor if he could produce the precise number of fees paid in the prior year. The advisor sprang into action and launched into a lengthy defense of the value he’d provided for the client over the course of many years—only to be interrupted by the client halfway. “No, no…I’m thrilled with your work. It’s just that my CPA asked how much I paid in advisory fees last year to determine if it might be deemed a deductible expense on my taxes.”

(Ahhhh…)

Thankfully, there’s a (free) insurance policy that can spare us the embarrassment and save us vast amounts of time if we’re willing to use it. It’s called—drumroll, please: the clarifying question.

But first, why do we have a tendency to jump to conclusions?

Why Do We Jump To Conclusions?

We’re simply wired that way—and it’s for a good reason! Our brain’s default mode is fast, associative, and pattern-matching. This is the processor in our brains that Daniel Kahneman referred to as System 1, and its tendency is to grab the nearest plausible explanation in response to external stimuli and run with it before our slower, more thoughtful and deliberate processor, System 2, can intervene.

I wince when I’m also reminded of the Fundamental Attribution Error, an observation that Lee Ross made all the way back in the 1970’s, noting that we systematically over-attribute other people’s behavior to their character or intent rather than to their circumstances—while simultaneously presuming that any harm that befalls us, individually, is surely due to our circumstances, not our character. That’s why it’s always the other driver’s fault when we get frustrated on the road.

Daniel Freeman further found that our tendency to jump to conclusions based on limited information accelerates when facing a social threat. And that’s the whole point: Our System 1 is activated because it is a protective mechanism. It may not always be right, but it is operating for our benefit. Millennia ago, it might have saved us from a predator, but it makes sense that it also triggers when we perceive that our livelihood may be at risk, like disappointing your boss or client.

So, how do we retain the protective benefits of our System 1 while better tapping into the more deliberative System 2?

Ways To Ask Better Clarifying Questions

Research from Zenger and Folkman in 2016 found that the best listeners ask questions that promote discovery and insight for the speaker, rather than us, the listener. Remember Dr. Klontz’s maxim—you can’t always believe what you think you’ve heard—and consider that whatever you’re hearing from the speaker is likely not a perfect articulation, and we can play a role in helping them find clarity.

Klontz invited me to put it to the test by practicing simple reflection. With this method, you simply parrot back to the speaker what you heard, verbatim to the best of your ability. “So, if I heard you correctly, the last time you reviewed your estate planning documents was in 2006?”

Sometimes it can seem almost silly, but I have been surprised, indeed, to note how often the speaker adjusts his or her statement, especially if you combine the question with a touch of simple silence. “Wait, no—that’s not right. It was actually 2004, right after Sarah was born. Jack was born in 2006, but life was so hectic then, I don’t think we ever updated them again.”

And if you’ve done a good enough job listening in the past, you may also employ strategic reflection. This is when you take what you’ve heard and report back to the speaker by imputing additional meaning or intent to confirm you’re correct. “Ahh, 2006 makes sense. That was when Jack was born, right?”

Maybe you were right, but sometimes this step also illuminates additional meaning that you didn’t necessarily foresee. “Yes, it was when Jack was born. But come to think of it, I don’t think we updated our documents then, after all. I remember being so intimidated by the legalese the first time around that I confess I was looking for an excuse not to go back to the attorney and feel like an idiot.”

Of course, they’re not an idiot, and neither are you for jumping to conclusions, but we could all use a touch of humility to make us better listeners.

Humble Inquiry

The late MIT Sloan School of Management professor, Edgar Schein, literally wrote the book on Humble Inquiry, noting that American professional culture, in particular, is deeply biased toward telling over asking. He describes the practice as “the fine art of drawing someone out, of asking questions to which you do not already know the answer.”

He encourages us to exhibit genuine curiosity longer than we may feel comfortable, and he insists that this is not some token “soft skill” that will slow down our processes. “Relationships are the key to good communication,” Schein says, and “good communication is the key to successful task accomplishment.”

Yes, we should save time in the long run by applying more effort in the short run to better understand what we’re actually hearing.

So, how would Schein have recommended we respond to the client inquiry about fees? He makes the distinction between three types of inquiry:

• Confrontational Inquiry is asking to challenge or test: “So, you think someone’s going to do a better job for you for less??”

• Diagnostic Inquiry is asking questions that lead toward a conclusion you’ve already reached: “Oh, are you unhappy with my performance?”

• Humble Inquiry, however, is asking a question you genuinely don’t know the answer to, from a place of curiosity rather than agenda, which Schein describes as asking “from ignorance.”

Perhaps a humbler approach to the fee question could be: “Of course, I’d be happy to get that for you. And can you give me the context, to be sure I give you all the details that may be helpful?”

And please note that Schein’s claim is that humble inquiry isn’t just a technique that should lead to better outcomes—though it may well be—but it can be far more. It’s a signal of relational trust. When you ask before you tell, and you’re genuinely curious, you’re communicating “I care, and I’m not afraid of what you might actually mean.” And that genuine curiosity can breed confidence that makes clients feel safer, more than any rehearsed value proposition.

And just for fun, how do we think Schein would’ve counseled Gavin’s eager support team following his statement, “The bear is sticky with honey”?

The confrontational version (“Gavin, are you saying we’re doing too much?”) would’ve likely landed them in even more trouble. The diagnostic version (“Is this about the presentation having too much…pizzazz?”) would’ve been presumptive. The humble version, although almost insultingly simple, would’ve likely eliminated all confusion:

“Hey Gavin—what bear?”

Of course, then we all would’ve missed out on a good laugh.

Quote O' The Week

Fran Lebowitz is a New York City-based author, cultural critic, and professional contrarian best known for two slim essay collections — Metropolitan Life (1978) and Social Studies (1981) — that cemented her reputation as one of the sharpest wits in American letters. A self-described slow writer (she has been "nearly finishing" a third book for decades), she has spent the intervening years doing what she does best: talking. Martin Scorsese documented her acerbic observations on New York, culture, and the general decline of everything in the Netflix series Pretend It's a City (2021). She is, in her own estimation, always right.

Weekly Market Update

Wow, it was a good week for stocks. Let’s check in with Tony below to see what new highs really means:

• + 2.33% .SPX (500 U.S. large companies)

• + 1.32% IWD (U.S. large value companies)

• + 1.75% IWM (U.S. small companies)

• + 1.63% IWN (U.S. small value companies)

• + 0.87% EFV (International value companies)

• + 2.94% SCZ (International small companies)

• + 0.14% VGIT (U.S. intermediate-term Treasury bonds

Don’t Fear New Highs

Contributed by Tony Welch, CFA®, CFP®, CMT, Chief Investment Officer, SignatureFD

One of the most common questions we hear when markets reach record highs is: “Should we really be investing new money here?” It’s a fair emotional reaction. New highs can feel like a warning sign, especially when headlines continue to focus on tariffs, deficits, geopolitical tensions, or concerns about the economy.

Historically, though, new highs have tended to be a sign of market strength rather than exhaustion. The chart below from Bespoke Investment Group shows that after the S&P 500 reaches a record high, forward returns have generally been better than average over the next 12 months. In other words, markets making new highs is a normal feature of long-term bull markets.

What makes this week particularly interesting is how the market reached those highs. On Wednesday, the S&P 500 opened strong and never looked back, finishing up more than 1% with the opening price marking the low point of the day. Historically, those types of “buyers in control all day” sessions have been followed by even stronger-than-average returns. The green bars in the chart highlight this setup, showing better forward returns over the next year than the market’s typical experience.

None of this means markets move straight up from here. We expect there will still be pullbacks, volatility, and plenty of reasons for investors to feel uneasy in the short run. But history suggests that new highs, especially those achieved on strong and broad buying pressure, have more often reflected momentum and improved confidence rather than signaling an imminent peak.

Chart O’ The Week

The Message from Our Indicators

The macro backdrop remains more resilient than many expected just a few months ago. This week’s labor market data reinforced that message. April payroll growth came in solid, unemployment held steady at 4.3%, and weekly jobless claims remain contained. While there are pockets of softness, particularly among lower-income consumers facing higher energy and food costs, the broader labor market still appears stable enough to keep recession fears in check for now. At the same time, the combination of AI-related capital spending, fiscal support, and steady employment growth continues to cushion the economy from the inflationary shock tied to the conflict in the Middle East. We believe the result is likely a Federal Reserve that remains patient, balancing still-firm inflation pressures against an economy that continues to expand rather than contract.

Corporate fundamentals also remain stronger than the headlines suggest. One of the more important observations we saw this week came from Strategas, which noted that despite the market’s rally this year, the S&P 500’s forward price-to-earnings multiple has actually contracted by roughly 5% year-to-date while earnings estimates have risen by about 13%. In other words, the market advance has been driven more by improving earnings than speculative multiple expansion. That distinction matters. It helps explain why the current environment differs from prior late-stage bubbles where valuations detached from fundamentals. Earnings growth tied to AI infrastructure spending, improving corporate profitability, and resilient economic activity continues to provide support underneath the market even as inflation and geopolitical concerns linger in the background.

From a trend and sentiment perspective, however, leadership remains narrower than we’d like to see. Semiconductor and AI-related stocks continue to experience an extraordinary melt-up, with some industry groups now trading at historically stretched levels relative to their long-term trends. Strategas highlighted that the semiconductor index is more than 50% above its 200-day moving average, a level only previously seen during the late-1990s technology boom.

At the same time, broader participation beneath the surface remains more muted, with only about half of S&P 500 stocks currently in confirmed uptrends. We do not view this as an outright bearish signal today, particularly with credit spreads remaining calm and cyclical leadership still constructive. But for the bull market to sustain itself over time, we believe leadership likely needs to broaden beyond the AI infrastructure trade into a wider set of sectors, industries, and company sizes. Encouragingly, we are beginning to see some signs of that beneath the surface, including relative strength from small caps, cyclicals, and international equities.

I hope you have an amazing Mother’s Day—especially if you are one!

Tim

In this week’s Financial LIFE Planning section, I’ll explore the three foundational elements Collins suggests are required for a deeply fulfilling life, and how we might deploy our finances in support of that worthy pursuit.

Finally, Tony closes things out with his Weekly Market Update, Growth Driven by AI Investment Cycle.

Thanks for joining us!

Tim Maurer, CFP®, RLP®

Partner

SIGNATUREFD

In this Net Worthwhile® Weekly you'll find:

• Financial LIFE Planning:

  • Flip The Arrow Of Money

• Quote O' The Week:

  • Barbara McClintock

• Weekly Market Update:

  • Growth Driven by AI Investment Cycle

Financial LIFE Planning

Flip The Arrow Of Money

Jim Collins’ New Book Reveals a Blind Spot in the FIRE Movement

First, let me disclaim, so that my bias is clear: I’ve never been a FIRE fan. It’s certainly not the F and the I that I have a problem with. There are very few downsides, after all, to being financially independent. It’s the R and the E that I take issue with: retire early.

But before you skewer me for sharing an opinion that seems unlikely, if not unbecoming, of a financial advisor, please let me explain. I think the goal of great financial planning isn’t just to have more money but to live a better life, and not just at some future date, many years down the road, that isn’t even promised.

To be fair, many modern FIRE advocates are less interested in ceasing work than in escaping dependence on compulsory work. That distinction matters, and it strengthens rather than weakens the question I want to raise here: even if FIRE is really about freedom, does it still subtly frame work itself as something to outgrow?

I understand the allure of a minimalist approach to life and the freedom of not having anyone to answer to as you seek your path, but working and saving at an extreme pace, all for the purpose of sustaining life without reliance on a paycheck, has never sounded particularly compelling to me.

Where FIRE Fails

But in Jim Collins’ new book, he offers an even more convincing argument that exposes a deeper tension within FIRE. In What To Make Of A Life, Collins extols findings from a vast research study that examined prominent pairings who followed similar courses in life to see where their paths converged, diverged, and which of those turns appeared to maximize, or in some cases minimize, genuine meaning in the lives of the subjects.

For example, among the pairings are scientists Barbara McClintock and Grace Hopper; NFL Hall of Famers Alan Page and Carl Eller; and my personal favorite pairing, rock ’n’ rollers Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, the lead vocalist and guitarist for Led Zeppelin.

Through the analysis, among many other insights, Collins identifies three elements that he suggests lead to a deeply fulfilling life, and I couldn’t help but think each of them stands in contrast to the assumptions often embedded in FIRE.

1) Find Your Encoding

First, Collins suggests that in order to live a deeply fulfilling life, we must find our encoding, our “durable, intrinsic capacities built into your construction, waiting to be discovered.” While these will almost certainly be skills that we build on, the important distinction here is that there should be evidence that these are skills we were built for.

An approach designed primarily to maximize income over a shorter span of time, if only to exit work sooner, may distract us from discovering that encoding altogether.

2) Flip The Arrow Of Money

Collins’ second insight may offer the deepest challenge to FIRE. He observes that his subjects “flip the arrow of money” in pursuit of the most fulfilling lives. Collins frames it as a question:

Is money fuel for your work, or is your work fuel for money?

He suggests we flip the arrow from money as the destination to money as the enabler.

To be clear, many of Collins’ subjects made substantial financial sacrifices, which FIRE well positions us to do. But the difference is in the purpose. With FIRE, the sacrifice can be oriented toward no longer having to work. In What To Make Of A Life, sacrifice is oriented toward being able to do the work one is encoded for.

That feels like a radically different vision.

Viewed through that lens, it can be the difference between freedom from work and freedom for meaningful work.

3) Feed Your Inner Fire

Collins’ final element of a deeply fulfilling life suggests we “feed our inner fire” through sustained effort, not a sprint.

While a handful of Collins’ subjects appeared to peak very early in life, what made most of their lives’ work distinctive was the second and third, and sometimes even fourth, pivots made as the frame of their encoding shifted, narrowed, or expanded.

For example, John Glenn was a pilot, a fighter pilot, a test pilot, an astronaut, a Congressman, and a Senator, all before becoming an astronaut again in his 70s.

That doesn’t look like escaping work. It’s personal evolution with and through it.

Perhaps the real essence of Collins’ findings is that meaningful work, paid or not, appears to be a core component of human flourishing. If that’s true, then the question is not how quickly we can escape work, but how intentionally we can orient it.

Quote O' The Week

Barbara McClintock (1902-1992) spent decades studying corn. Not glamorous work, and for much of her career, largely ignored. When she presented her discovery of "jumping genes" in the 1950s, the scientific community didn't just overlook it; many considered it too radical to take seriously. She quietly kept going anyway. In 1983 — roughly thirty years later — she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, becoming the only woman to receive an unshared Nobel in that category. She was 81. She continued working at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory until shortly before her death at 90.

Weekly Market Update

Equities were up across the board this week, with only bonds in the red:

• + 0.91% .SPX (500 U.S. large companies)

• + 1.41% IWD (U.S. large value companies)

• + 0.95% IWM (U.S. small companies)

• + 0.61% IWN (U.S. small value companies)

• + 0.87% EFV (International value companies)

• + 1.09% SCZ (International small companies)

• - 0.70% VGIT (U.S. intermediate-term Treasury bonds

Growth Driven by AI Investment Cycle

Contributed by Tony Welch, CFA®, CFP®, CMT, Chief Investment Officer, SignatureFD

The U.S. economy continues to show resilience, with first-quarter GDP coming in at a solid pace. But when you look under the hood, the composition of that growth tells a more nuanced story. As shown in the chart, business investment, particularly capital expenditures, was the primary driver of growth, while consumer spending moderated, and other areas like housing, remained a drag.

What stands out is just how concentrated that strength has become. Nonresidential investment surged at a double-digit pace, fueled largely by spending on equipment and technology tied to the ongoing buildout of artificial intelligence infrastructure. In fact, high-tech investment alone accounted for a significant portion of overall GDP growth in the quarter.

At the same time, the consumer, the traditional backbone of the U.S. economy, is still growing, but at a slower and more measured pace. That doesn’t signal weakness on its own, but it does reinforce the idea that today’s expansion is being powered by a narrower set of drivers than in past cycles.

Our takeaway isn’t that growth is deteriorating, it’s that it’s evolving. The economy remains on solid footing, but is increasingly influenced by where investment dollars are flowing, rather than broad-based demand across all sectors.

Chart O’ The Week

The Message from Our Indicators

The economic backdrop remains steady, even if the crosscurrents have picked up. Growth rebounded in the first quarter, supported by a surge in business investment, while labor market data continues to point to resilience. At the same time, inflation pressures have firmed, which is likely to keep the Federal Reserve on hold for the time being. Our takeaway from the data is straightforward: the economy is holding up better than many expected, but not in a way that gives the Fed a clear path to easing policy. That combination, resilient growth with still-elevated inflation, helps explain why interest rates are likely to remain in a holding pattern.

Corporate fundamentals continue to provide support for markets, though the strength is not evenly distributed. Earnings expectations remain solid, with forecasts calling for healthy growth over the coming quarters. Much of the momentum is being driven by companies tied to the AI buildout, where capital spending remains elevated and, importantly, is still largely being funded through internal cash flows rather than external borrowing. That’s an important distinction, as it suggests the current investment cycle is built on a relatively strong foundation. Still, the concentration of growth in a narrow set of companies and themes is worth monitoring, particularly as valuations in those areas have already adjusted higher.

From a market perspective, trends remain constructive, but the underlying participation is more mixed. Equity markets have pushed to new highs, supported by cyclical leadership and improving earnings expectations, yet breadth indicators suggest the rally has not been fully broad-based. Leadership has rotated frequently, and sentiment measures have moved back toward more optimistic levels, which can limit near-term upside if not supported by broader participation. In other words, the trend is positive, but it is not without its fragilities.

Putting it all together, our positioning remains balanced. We continue to see a supportive backdrop for equities overall, but with enough concentration and uncertainty to warrant diversification. Our recent moves, adding exposure to areas like small caps and international markets, reflect that view, positioning portfolios to benefit if leadership broadens beyond the narrow set of companies that have driven much of the market’s recent strength.

Hoping your week to come is a great one!

Tim

It didn’t, of course. It came from a song. And this week, I’m making the case that it contains what may be the single most important precursor to a successful financial plan — one that comes before budgeting, before investing, and before the most famous maxim in personal finance.

We’ll take a look at it in our Financial LIFE Planning section. And don’t miss our Weekly Market Update, too, in which Tony Welch asks a question worth sitting with: Are Investors Already “All In”?

Thanks for joining us this fine Sunday morning!

Tim Maurer, CFP®, RLP®

Partner

SIGNATUREFD

In this Net Worthwhile® Weekly you'll find:

• Financial LIFE Planning:

  • What We Want And What We Need

• Quote O' The Week:

  • Henry David Thoreau

• Weekly Market Update:

  • Are Investors Already “All In”?

Financial LIFE Planning

What We Want And What We Need

Why the confusion between wants and needs is upstream of even the most treasured financial maxims.

“Art imitates life” is a loose interpretation of an Aristotelian saying that Oscar Wilde, ever the contrarian, argued: “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”

I’m with Wilde. And thanks to a great piece of art—a musical quote, in this case—this particular post will be shorter than usual because it, as they say, writes itself.

This quote comes from the band REM and their first song on the 1987 album Document, which represents the beginning of what would become enormous commercial success. While I try to avoid over-engineering the meaning behind songs that regularly have multiple dimensions, it’s suggested that “The Finest Worksong” was a critique of work culture based on Henry David Thoreau’s observations at Walden Pond. I don’t think that’s much of a leap considering Thoreau, himself, is explicitly mentioned in the song.

But I don’t think we need to look too far for subtext when the text itself is so pointed and, I’ll suggest, practical:

“What we want and what we need has been confused. Been confused.”

Now I’d like to make the bold claim that eliminating this confusion—between what we want and what we need—is one of the precursors to any successful financial plan.

Furthermore, I submit that the elimination of this confusion is upstream of virtually every financial dysfunction: lifestyle inflation, status spending, over-saving at the expense of meaning, working too long, retiring too early. And the elimination of this confusion is even a prerequisite for the all-time, hall-of-fame, financial maxim to “live below our means.” The latter addresses a symptom; the former addresses the root.

The Zone, Not The Line

The challenge, however, is that the “line” between needs and wants is really more like a zone—and a zone that occasionally moves. I know this will sound silly, but for some, a second home or a country club membership registers as a need. If that sounds ridiculous, let’s rein it in just a touch: Don’t you think there are a lot of people out there—perhaps you’re one of them—who would consider providing their children with a car or a college education as, indeed, a need?

While on the other end of the spectrum, 80% of the world’s population doesn’t have access to a car at all. And there are those considered impoverished, or even homeless, in the United States whose financial wherewithal is greater than that of someone stably employed in much of the developing world.

So the REM front man, Michael Stipe, is verifiably correct that what we want and what we need have been confused, and a meaningful part of the work of financial planning—however seemingly tedious—is to draw our line (or establish our zone) between wants and needs for us. For our families.

A Different Kind of Accounting

You’ve likely heard the phrase, “Show me what you spend money on and I’ll show you what’s important to you.” But however true that might be, it sounds pretty judgmental and condescending, doesn’t it? It feels like the next thing coming is a guilt trip to spend less on yourself, give more to those in need, and the most ubiquitous of whipping posts, to watch less Netflix.

But what if we saw this less as a should and more of a can—less of a have to and more of a get to? My friend, and one of the great illuminators of the heart through the lens of money, Carl Richards, suggests that our acknowledgment of the connection between our values and our spending need not be a pejorative proclamation, but instead a generative journey.

“What if our entire framework around spending money became a practice,” Richards asks, “in which we aligned our spending with what’s important to us?”

What could that look like? “You spend… you notice,” Carl suggests. “Spend… notice. Repeat.”

And he handles the tendency for self-flagellation here beautifully:

“If you don’t like what you see, yeah, it might hurt a little, but it gives you valuable information that allows you to change your behavior.”

And unlike the self-proclaimed personal finance guru crowd out there who seem so willing to suggest that there is inherent value in thrift, Richards concludes that “The goal here isn’t to spend less. It’s to spend lavishly on the things you value and cut ruthlessly on the things you don’t.”

We’re always talking about rebalancing our portfolios as a wise practice in wealth management—but what about our budgets and spending? Couldn’t it make sense to recalibrate our spending periodically, too?

And this is where the help of a financial advisor can come into play, not to tell us what our line is between needs and wants, or to impute his or her values into our plan to drive our spending—but to create the safe space and ask the potentially hard questions that help us see where our current line is, to identify where we want it to be, and then to live and spend and save in accordance with the values we’ve identified and articulated.

Thoreau retreated to Walden to figure out what he really needed. Stipe seems to have written a song to wrestle with the challenge, right as REM was launching into super-stardom. What about you? How do you want to address your needs and wants, your spending and saving, and how well they’re all aligned with the stuff in life you say is the most important?

Maybe you can enjoy The Finest Worksong while you’re considering those questions.

Quote O' The Week

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an American author, philosopher, and naturalist best known for an experiment he conducted in the woods of Concord, Massachusetts. In 1845, he built a small cabin by hand on the shores of Walden Pond and lived there for two years, two months, and two days — deliberately stripping his life down to its essentials to answer a question most people never stop long enough to ask: What do I actually need? His account of that experiment, Walden, remains one of the most searching examinations of the relationship between how we spend our days and what we say we value.

Weekly Market Update

Markets were mixed this week, with domestic stocks eeking out another weekly gain while international stocks went the other way:

• + 0.55% .SPX (500 U.S. large companies)

• + 0.22% IWD (U.S. large value companies)

• + 0.32% IWM (U.S. small companies)

• + 0.25% IWN (U.S. small value companies)

• - 2.46% EFV (International value companies)

• - 3.18% SCZ (International small companies)

• + 0.30% VGIT (U.S. intermediate-term Treasury bonds

Are Investors Already “All-In”?

Contributed by Tony Welch, CFA®, CFP®, CMT, Chief Investment Officer, SignatureFD

Ned Davis Research attempted to answer a compelling question last week: if investors are already heavily allocated to stocks, what drives markets higher from here? The chart this week shows that institutional equity exposure is sitting near the upper end of its historical range, levels that, in the past, have coincided with periods of strong optimism and near the end of bull markets.

That might sound ominous, after all, if everyone is already invested, who is left to buy? But markets rarely move on positioning alone. In fact, history shows that elevated allocations can persist for extended periods when the underlying backdrop remains supportive. In other words, “fully invested” doesn’t necessarily mean “fully valued” or “fully played out.”

What stands out in the data is that this positioning comes with some important offsets. Corporate profitability remains strong, supported by years of efficiency gains and relatively low labor cost pressures. Companies are also sitting on healthy cash reserves, giving them flexibility to invest, buy back shares, or weather volatility. Additionally, the proliferation of defined contribution retirement plans has been a steady source of demand. So while positioning may limit how fast markets move, the fundamental backdrop still helps explain why investors have been willing to stay invested in the first place.

Chart O’ The Week

The Message from Our Indicators

The economic data continues to paint a resilient, if slightly more complex, picture. Business activity is holding in expansion territory, with recent data showing a pickup in both manufacturing and services. At the same time, inflation pressures are re-emerging, driven in part by higher energy prices and renewed supply chain frictions tied to geopolitical tensions. Consumers, however, continue to show durability, with retail spending remaining firm even as prices rise. Taken together, we believe the economy looks less like it is rolling over and more like it is navigating a period of steady growth with pockets of inflation, enough to keep the Federal Reserve patient, but not enough to derail the expansion.

From a fundamental perspective, the story remains constructive. Profit margins are holding near cycle highs, with much of the recent earnings strength coming from areas where scarcity still exists, namely energy and technology. Over time, imbalances like the ones we’re seeing in oil and AI infrastructure tend to normalize, but for now, they are helping support index-level earnings and, by extension, equity markets.

From a trend and sentiment standpoint, the market’s recent rally has been impressive, but not without nuance. Momentum has been strong, historically strong in fact, but some of the confirming signals we typically look for, like broad participation, have been more muted. That leaves us in a familiar position: the trend is positive, but not yet fully validated. Layer on top of that the reality that investor positioning is already elevated, and it suggests that future gains may come with more volatility and less margin for error.

Putting it all together, we remain balanced in our positioning. The economy is holding up, fundamentals are still supportive, and trends are constructive, even if not perfect. At the same time, we are mindful of concentration risks and the potential for leadership to evolve. That’s reflected in our recent moves to add exposure to areas like small caps and international markets, where valuations are more reasonable, and the opportunity set is broader. In an environment like this, we believe staying invested matters, but so does staying diversified.

Mindfully,

Tim

This week, W. B. Yeats shows us what that actually looks like.

Keats and Yeats. The names almost rhyme, and so, it turns out, do their preoccupations. Both poets were obsessed with the gap between what we can plan for and what we actually receive—between the life we construct and the moments that arrive uninvited. Keats said we don’t have to resolve the tension. Yeats sat alone in a London coffee shop and discovered, for twenty unplanned minutes, what it feels like when we don’t.

This week’s Financial LIFE Planning post is about Planning For The Unplannable—which, I believe, is planning for how we spend most of our lives. And in our Weekly Market Update this week, Tony offers a touch of warning, as he thinks Inflation May Soon Become a Headwind.

Thanks for joining us!

Tim Maurer, CFP®, RLP®

Partner

SIGNATUREFD

In this Net Worthwhile® Weekly you'll find:

• Financial LIFE Planning:

  • Planning For The Unplannable

• Quote O' The Week:

  • Mary Oliver

• Weekly Market Update:

  • Inflation May Soon Become a Headwind

Financial LIFE Planning

Planning For The Unplannable

The Real Goal Isn’t Just To Fund A Life, But To Leave Room To Live It.

Financial planning is built around a handful of momentous events, but most of life is lived in between them.

Think about it. Benchmark moments—birthing, schooling, graduating, commencing, working, marrying, moving, arriving, promoting, divorcing, demoting, retiring, disabling, dying—are so big that they require, and therefore anchor, our planning. But we spend many more of our moments in the mundane than the momentous. So what does our planning have to do with those moments?

As is often the case, we must turn to art to inform our math. In this case, our instructor is a middle-aged Irish poet who finds himself in between momentous moments while nonetheless arriving at a realization, if not a revelation:

My fiftieth year had come and gone,

I sat, a solitary man,

In a crowded London shop,

An open book and empty cup

On the marble table-top.

While on the shop and street I gazed

My body of a sudden blazed;

And twenty minutes more or less

It seemed, so great my happiness,

That I was blessed and could bless.

This, the fourth of an eight-stanza poem by W. B. Yeats, called Vacillation, finds our protagonist at a midpoint between pendulum swings from earthy desperation to philosophical heights, finding a moment (or 20 minutes, to be exact) that could, I believe, pass for a quiet picture of financial independence.

“That I was blessed and could bless” sounds to me like the very definition of true wealth—Enough—and yet we’ve made it so much more complicated, haven’t we.

What We’ve Made Planning About

Planning has such a heavy focus on accumulation and optimization, and for reasons that are understandable, I suppose. For example, the average cost of a wedding in 2026 is $34,600. Of raising 2.5 kids, from newborn to 18? About (and I’d say at least) a million bucks. And that’s before college, which will likely run about another $150,000 all in. Per kid.

And while you’re doing all that, please don’t forget your retirement savings. The cocktail napkin approach suggests you could expect to need 25x your annual income in savings. So, if you wanted around $100,000 of income in retirement, the simple calculation suggests you’d need a cool $2.5 million in that 401(k) and other sundry retirement accounts to fund your desired lifestyle.

So yes, we have to plan (well) in advance to accommodate these large numbers—but at what point does our planning to live become a life necessitated to satisfy the plan?

Well before the invention of the defined contribution retirement plan (401(k)), Yeats seems to have acknowledged as much elsewhere in Vacillation.

From the first stanza, he wrestles with the polar ends of the pendulum:

Between extremities

Man runs his course…

In the third, he acknowledges the pressure to fund our life, and our ego:

Get all the gold and silver that you can,

Satisfy ambition, animate

The trivial days and ram them with the sun…

So what’s the point?

Margin For Mundane Moments

Margin.

Of course, margin isn’t only financial. Some of the most constrained people I know have plenty of money.

Yes, we need to plan for the big stuff, and the milestones matter. But let’s not forget that with the millions required to fund the resume, the house(s), the cars, the 529 plans, the 401(k) accounts, the Roth conversions, and all the insurance required to maintain all of that, even in the case of our death or disability, none of those are actually the thing.

The thing might just be that 20-minute stop in the coffee shop that cost all of about $6.00 (in today’s dollars—or pounds). The in-between moments with our loved ones that cost nothing.

The irony is that Yeats couldn’t fully escape the weight either. The stanza immediately following his coffee shop revelation is perhaps the most honest in the poem:

Although the summer Sunlight gild

Cloudy leafage of the sky,

Or wintry moonlight sink the field

In storm-scattered intricacy,

I cannot look thereon,

Responsibility so weighs me down.

Twenty minutes of grace. Then back to the weight of a life. He didn’t solve it. Neither will we.

But here’s what a good financial plan can actually do: It can reduce the weight enough that the twenty minutes are possible. Not guaranteed. These moments can’t be engineered, only received. But a plan that creates margin, reduces anxiety, and isn’t entirely mortgaged to the next milestone at least leaves the door open.

Quote O' The Week

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and became one of the best-selling poets in American history — an almost unheard-of commercial achievement for serious literary verse. The surprising part: she gave almost no interviews, avoided the literary establishment entirely, and spent her days walking the woods and marshes of Cape Cod, which is where virtually every poem came from.

Weekly Market Update

How many times have you said, “You can’t make this stuff up!” in 2026? Well, here’s another, as half of the indices we track managed 52-week highs after testing lows quite recently:

• + 4.54% .SPX (500 U.S. large companies)

• + 2.39% IWD (U.S. large value companies)

• + 5.54% IWM (U.S. small companies)

• + 3.57% IWN (U.S. small value companies)

• + 1.13% EFV (International value companies)

• + 2.87% SCZ (International small companies)

• + 0.56% VGIT (U.S. intermediate-term Treasury bonds

Inflation May Soon Become a Headwind

Contributed by Tony Welch, CFA®, CFP®, CMT, Chief Investment Officer, SignatureFD

Consumer inflation (CPI) peaked at 9% in June 2022. This bull market began only a few months later. Clearly, an easing rate of inflation has been a tailwind for stocks for over three years. But the combination of tariff passthrough and higher energy prices threatens to push up inflation in the coming months. It’s already climbed to about 3.3%.

The chart below compares inflation to its average level for the past six months. Historically, when CPI falls below its average, stocks have performed well. When inflation rises meaningfully above its average, stocks have struggled. The indicator remains bullish for stocks following the March inflation print, but another higher inflation reading in April could result in an inflation headwind for stocks. Importantly, that doesn’t mean that we should expect a major bear market, just a more challenging environment than we have experienced since Fall 2022.

Chart O’ The Week

The Message from Our Indicators

In the past week, many stock market indices climbed back to their all-time high levels. The quick recovery is historic in nature. The market recovered its -10% correction in 11 trading days. That is the fastest recovery of a -5% to -10% correction in history. While it is interesting to see history made, a study by Bespoke Investment Group suggests we shouldn’t read too much into the implications for the rest of the year. Previous quick recoveries have been followed by an average return of 4.6% in the subsequent six months. More importantly, we’re keeping an eye on the quality of the rally. We would like to see a high percentage of stocks, industries, and global markets rally together. Thus far, we haven’t gotten enough confirmation to confidently proclaim that the volatility is behind us. Nevertheless, our trend indicators remain bullish, which shouldn’t be much of a surprise given fresh all-time high.

From a macro perspective, the data remains mixed. As discussed above, inflation is top of mind for consumers, and as a result, we’ve seen consumer confidence erode. But real-time economic measures suggest that the expansion remains intact. In fact, the Citigroup Economic Surprise Index, which measures whether reports are coming in above or below expectations, has been positive all year. But the inflationary impulse has taken the Fed from easing mode to neutral. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but stocks have performed best when the Fed has been lowering rates.

One of the ongoing sources of economic support has been the corporate profit cycle. Earnings season for Q1 is underway, and preliminary results have been strong. Analysts estimate that earnings will have grown by double-digits for the sixth consecutive quarter. Rising profits have supported the labor markets. Interestingly, the inflationary impulse that may become a headwind to stock prices is a likely tailwind for earnings, meaning that earnings are likely to rise more than stock prices. That combination is not necessarily a bad thing because the result would be cheaper valuations. For now, the message from our indicators remains constructive.

Always constructive,

Tim

In this week’s Financial LIFE Planning submission, I’m drawing inspiration from the 19th Century poet, John Keats, who introduced the world to the notion of “negative capability” in a letter to his brothers—suggesting that the ability to hold irreducible uncertainty in tension was what separated an accomplished artist, like Coleridge, from true greatness, like that exhibited by Shakespeare.

The implications of this seeming hair splitting are substantial, whether we’re DIY-ers, financial advisors, or leaders in another domain. The result may just be the very art of advice. And don’t miss this week’s Weekly Market Update from Nick Amat either, as he questions whether The Consumer Engine is Starting to Strain.

Thanks for joining us on this Master’s weekend!

Tim Maurer, CFP®, RLP®

Partner

SIGNATUREFD

In this Net Worthwhile® Weekly you'll find:

• Financial LIFE Planning:

  • Stop Reaching For Certainty

• Quote O' The Week:

  • Rainer Maria Rilke

• Weekly Market Update:

  • The Consumer Engine is Starting to Strain

Financial LIFE Planning

Stop Reaching For Certainty

A 19th-century poet identified the most valuable quality in a financial advisor.

One of the most impactful calls I’ve ever received from a client didn’t have anything to do with a market turndown, or even a major life experience or transition. It came out of nowhere, seemingly, from one of my more cerebral clients.

He said, “Tim, I know we’ve run all the numbers and everything says I’m ready to retire, but it just doesn’t feel like it. In fact, somehow I’m still so convinced that I need to make and save more money that I’m taking extra holiday shifts at work.”

The shifts he was referring to were at the medical practice where he was a partner. The numbers he referenced were any number of “What if” scenarios that placed him somewhere between a 98% and 100% probability of not running out of money in retirement, with most of the thousands of calculations resulting in leaving behind so much money that his kids (and grandkids) would likely have estate tax issues to deal with.

First world problems, yes, but the struggle was real. The client was suffering from serious stress that had stripped him of the joy of his work and caused him to question every expenditure and investment. And he already had one of the more conservative portfolio designs I’d implemented for someone with his ability, willingness, and need to take on risk.

This illustration is absolutely based on a true story, and I can certify for you that virtually any advisor who’s worked in this business for more than a few years has multiple examples of this syndrome to draw on. But before we can offer a solution, we need to address the problem:

The Problem: The Financial Industry Built A Trap

Financial industry architecture is built around certainty and the attempts to translate uncertainty into certainty. We start with the knowable—what is in the present and what has been in the past—but then we attempt to transfer that knowability to the unknowable future.

We disclaim (as we should) that past performance is no indication of future performance, that there are no guarantees in life or money. Then we use precisely that past performance—as well as estimates on everything from tax rates to cholesterol readings, often decades into the future—to model what our clients’ futures may look like.

And clients have (understandably) come to demand it, too, because uncertainty is uncomfortable. The problem is that attempts to make certain that which is irreducibly uncertain can undermine the very confidence we hope to instill.

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky called this the “certainty effect,” through which we learn that our psychological drive toward certainty is so powerful that it leads us to accept worse outcomes just to feel certain. The demand is human. The supply, in financial planning, is largely fictional.

This is the only possible explanation for why I suffered a tinge of disappointment after a recent MRI found that a cyst in my brain hadn’t grown and likely wasn’t the cause of the chronic migraines I’ve dealt with for more than 30 years. What a strange emotion, I thought, that the catharsis I desperately yearned for—the proverbial smoking gun—could be a life-threatening diagnosis.

So, when considering the power—and danger—of the certainty effect, what is an alternative solution?

A 19th Century Poetic Solution: Negative Capability

A 19th-century Romantic poet had a name for the capacity to resist that impulse for certainty—and he believed it was the quality that separated the merely brilliant from the truly great. He called it “negative capability.”

The poet was John Keats, 22 years old at the time, and arguably just beginning to find his voice, having very recently suffered a devastating review of his 4,000-line poem, Endymion. The context was a letter he was writing to his younger brothers, one of whom was ill with tuberculosis, the disease that had killed their mother and would claim his teen brother Tom almost exactly a year later.

Walking home from the Drury Lane theater in London the day after Christmas, an idea “at once it struck him,” that he codified in this letter to his brother, observing the limitations of a fixed mindset in the face of so much very real uncertainty.

Keats used William Shakespeare as an example of a brilliant artist who “possessed so enormously” the trait of negative capability—when one “is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

He contrasted this gift with a posture he attributed to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, by any measure a towering figure of English Romanticism himself, but Keats observed that Coleridge “would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge.”

In other words, when he got to the end of his wits, he was unwilling or unable to hold in tension that could not be completely knowable. Keats takes it one step further to suggest that it’s possible for some of us to only find “a sense of identity” when we have made up our minds about everything.

Please note, however, that Keats isn’t merely using these two competing postures as simple examples, but as the litmus test to discern the difference between artists who were clever and those who were truly great. Which begs the question of us as advisors—and leaders of any variety in our chosen fields:

Are You A Shakespearean Or Coleridgian Advisor/Leader?

Can we be honest with ourselves for a moment? Do we lean toward the Shakespearean or Coleridgian tendency? Are we comfortable with the unknown and unknowable, or do we have to calculate everything—including the incalculable—to the point that our very identity starts to crack in the face of uncertainty, even, if not especially, when that uncertainty appears irreducible?

First, it’s ok if we—if you—lean with Coleridge, the poet of at least two legendary works, in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan.

But.

But it may not be a stretch to suggest that Coleridge’s inability to hold uncertainty in tension didn’t just limit his art, but contributed to the opium addiction that ultimately took his life.

And while an attempt to create certainty where it can’t be found may not kill you, it could absolutely impact your practice. “Certainty is a myth. It’s really easy to sell but impossible to deliver,” says advisor sage, Carl Richards, via Kitces.com. “Every client you win based on a beautiful 30-year plan…if you’re using language like ‘I’m 97.2374% confident,’ you will lose that client because of that kind of language.”

So, knowing what not to do, what can we do as advisors?

The Art Of Advice

The art of advice, I submit, is to first be the tension holder for our clients when they struggle to do so, and then to transfer our confidence, well-informed by our education, credentials, and especially our experience. In so doing, we can free our clients both to act—or to be ok doing nothing at all—in the face of irreducible uncertainty.

Wilfred Bion, the British psychoanalyst, WWI tank commander, and one of the most original post-Freudian thinkers, explicitly adopted Keats’ term, negative capability, for clinical use. His advice, well applied, I believe by advisors, is that “The purest form of listening is to listen without memory or desire.”

He encourages us further to “Discard your memory; discard the future tense of your desire; forget them both, both what you know and what you want, to leave space for a new idea.”

A new idea. That’s precisely what the client I referenced above ultimately found. Through some work that had nothing to do with numbers, we charted a new course with new ideas that ultimately reshaped his balance sheet, his cash flow statement, and his views of work and play.

Keats left us with one more thought in that December letter, perhaps the most radical of all, that with the truly great, “the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.” When you are fully present with a client—not performing certainty, not reaching, just listening without memory or desire—something shifts. The need for certainty doesn’t get answered. It dissolves.

That’s not a planning technique. That’s the art of advice.

Quote O' The Week

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) was a Bohemian-Austrian poet widely considered one of the most lyrically gifted writers in the German language. His most beloved work, Letters to a Young Poet, has quietly accompanied readers through uncertainty and transition for over a century.

Weekly Market Update

A second straight up week:

• + 3.56% .SPX (500 U.S. large companies)

• + 2.94% IWD (U.S. large value companies)

• + 3.98% IWM (U.S. small companies)

• + 3.72% IWN (U.S. small value companies)

• + 3.64% EFV (International value companies)

• + 4.84% SCZ (International small companies)

• + 0.07% VGIT (U.S. intermediate-term Treasury bonds

The Consumer Engine is Starting to Strain

Contributed by Nick Amat, CFA®, CAIA®, Senior Portfolio Designer, SignatureFD

Consumer spending has remained the primary engine of U.S. economic growth, accounting for roughly two-thirds of GDP and helping sustain momentum even as interest rates have moved higher. What is shifting, however, is not the level of spending but its distribution.

Since 2019, the majority of net worth gains have accrued to the top 20% of households, largely driven by asset appreciation, and that cohort continues to represent an outsized share of total consumption. At the same time, they are the only group spending less than their share of income, maintaining a meaningful financial cushion. In contrast, lower- and middle-income households are spending more in line with or slightly above their income share, reflecting the cumulative impact of higher prices on everyday expenses. The result is an economy where growth is increasingly supported by financially resilient consumers, even as broader sentiment data suggests inflation is beginning to shape spending behavior at the margin.

There are some offsets worth noting. Tax refunds are trending toward historically high levels, which should provide a near-term liquidity boost, particularly for households with a higher propensity to spend, and wage growth remains positive in real terms for many workers. However, the path of inflation will remain critical, particularly through energy markets.

Recent geopolitical tensions involving Iran have pushed oil prices higher, and if sustained, those increases tend to flow through quickly to gasoline and other essential costs. For lower- and middle-income households, that dynamic can act as a constraint on discretionary spending, reinforcing the growing divide in consumption patterns. The broader takeaway is that the consumer remains a source of stability, but the burden of sustaining growth is becoming more concentrated and increasingly influenced by how households respond to the next phase of inflation.

Chart O’ The Week

The Message from Our Indicators

The March CPI report was the key macro development this week, showing a notable reacceleration in headline inflation. Prices rose 0.9% month-over-month and 3.3% year-over-year, a meaningful step up from February’s 2.4% pace. The increase was largely driven by energy, with gasoline prices surging more than 20% during the month. Beneath the surface, inflation was more stable, with core CPI rising 0.2% on the month and 2.6% year-over-year, consistent with a gradual disinflation trend.

For markets and policymakers, that distinction is important. The recent conflict involving Iran has added uncertainty to energy markets, and the durability of higher oil prices will be key. If prices stabilize, the disinflation trend can continue. If not, the risk lies in second-order effects as higher costs begin to filter through the broader economy. For now, we maintain a neutral view, as underlying inflation remains contained but the range of outcomes has widened.

From a trend perspective, markets continue to work through the March correction, with U.S. equities largely flat year-to-date after a volatile start. As we noted last week, the focus is on how the market recovers. While conditions have stabilized, follow-through remains uneven and leadership relatively narrow. At the same time, international equities have shown stronger relative performance, suggesting the broader trend is rotating rather than breaking down. A sustained reopening of the Strait of Hormuz could help ease energy pressures and support sentiment, but for now, confirmation will come from broader participation across sectors. We continue to give the bull market the benefit of the doubt.

From a fundamental perspective, the backdrop remains supportive, though the focus is shifting. The labor market continues to underpin income growth and demand, while earnings expectations remain constructive. The key question is margins, particularly as higher energy costs create potential pressure. For now, balance sheets are strong, and companies retain pricing power. Until we see meaningful margin compression or downward revisions to earnings, the fundamental outlook remains intact.

Hoping for no downward revisions for your weekend!

Tim

And yet, like most conversations between two people in this profession, we didn’t spend much time on markets or money.

We talked about our kids.

Between us, we have five—two of mine in college, one of his in high school, another in middle school, and one of mine just beginning her transition out of diapers. (Long story.) And as often happens, two people who spend their lives helping others define what matters most ended up comparing notes on what matters most to us.

That conversation stayed with me later that night as I picked up Theo of Golden, a novel that has been quietly working on me. Somewhere in those pages, I was reminded of a piece of research I’d heard about years ago but never fully absorbed.

It’s a study that was done at Harvard years ago examining the messages we send our kids about what’s most important in life—and what they actually think we think about what’s most important. Would you be surprised to know that there’s a big gap? The result is that we may be raising high achievers who don’t know what true wealth is.

I examine that gap and the implications for our parenting and money management in this week’s Financial LIFE Planning section before our resident investment guru, Tony Welch, breaks down a Bifurcated First Quarter in the Weekly Market Update.

Thanks for joining us for this week, and Happy Easter!

Tim Maurer, CFP®, RLP®

Partner

SIGNATUREFD

In this Net Worthwhile® Weekly you'll find:

• Financial LIFE Planning:

  • What Message Are We Really Sending Our Kids?

• Quote O' The Week:

  • H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

• Weekly Market Update:

  • A Bifurcated First Quarter

Financial LIFE Planning

What Message Are We Really Sending Our Kids?

So, is it possible that we’re raising high achievers who don’t know what true wealth is? That’s certainly what the 96/19 gap would suggest.

What’s the 96/19 gap?

A widely cited Harvard-based study on parent-child value perception found that 96% of parents say raising caring, moral children is essential.

But when their kids were asked what their parents actually prioritize?

Only 19% said caring for others.

The dominant answer was achievement—success, performance, personal happiness.

In other words, we say one thing. Our kids hear another.

It’s Not What We Say. It’s What They See.

To be fair, most parents are saying the right things. In the same research, over 80% of kids reported that their parents clearly communicate that kindness matters.

But here’s the problem:

Kids are sophisticated readers of subtext.

They notice what we celebrate.
They notice what we stress about.
They notice what changes our tone, our energy, our attention.

And in many homes, achievement simply carries more emotional weight.

Not because we’re insincere. But because our anxieties are louder than our aspirations.

The researchers called this dynamic “drowning out.” We don’t explicitly devalue character. We just inadvertently amplify everything else.

And it’s not just parents. Teachers show a similar gap between what they say and what students perceive. Which suggests this isn’t a failure of intent. It’s a failure of signal.

The Irony We Can’t Afford to Miss

Here’s the part that should give every high-functioning, well-intentioned parent pause:

The intense pressure to produce high-achieving kids doesn’t reliably produce high-achieving adults.

What it often produces instead is fragility.

When we over-index on protecting kids from failure or underperformance, we rob them of the very experiences that build resilience, judgment, and self-trust. The traits that actually underpin both success and well-being.

So in the pursuit of achievement and happiness, many kids end up struggling to find either.

And of course, the issue isn’t that achievement is bad. The issue is when achievement becomes the scoreboard for worth.

The Question I’m Almost Afraid to Ask

There’s a question I haven’t asked my boys—but I think I need to.

One is a senior at the University of Georgia. The other is a sophomore. I admire the young men they’re becoming—yes, for what they’ve accomplished, but far more for how they treat people.

Still, I’ve never asked them directly:

“Do you feel like it’s more important to me that you succeed—or that you care for others?”

I suspect their answers would teach me something. And regardless of what they say, it would give me a chance to close any gap between what I believe and what they’ve experienced.

Not just for them, but for their little sister who’s watching it all unfold in real time.

Closing the Gap

If there’s a takeaway here, it’s not to lower expectations or dial back ambition.

It’s to get more honest about what we’re actually reinforcing.

Because our kids won’t become what we say we value.

They’ll become what we consistently reward, react to, and model.

And if we’re not careful, we may succeed in raising kids who know how to win… but don’t know what’s worth winning.

If that happens, it won’t be an accident.

We will have trained them well.

If you’re interested in some more of the findings from the study, check out this graphical summary.

Quote O' The Week

H. Jackson Brown Jr. is an American author best known for Life's Little Instruction Book—a collection of wisdom he originally wrote as a going-away gift for his son heading off to college, which went on to become one of the bestselling books of the 1990s. The fact that his most famous work began as a father's letter to his child makes him a fitting voice for a post about what we actually pass on to the people we love most.

Weekly Market Update

Looks like some folks bought the dip this week:

• + 3.36% .SPX (500 U.S. large companies)

• + 2.60% IWD (U.S. large value companies)

• + 3.37% IWM (U.S. small companies)

• + 3.06% IWN (U.S. small value companies)

• + 4.37% EFV (International value companies)

• + 3.98% SCZ (International small companies)

• + 0.37% VGIT (U.S. intermediate-term Treasury bonds

A Bifurcated First Quarter

Contributed by Tony Welch, CFA®, CFP®, CMT, Chief Investment Officer, SignatureFD

The table below shows S&P 500 sector returns by quarter back to 2023. In the far-right column, we can see that Q1 was a very bifurcated quarter. Energy was up big. Materials, Utilities, Staples, Industrials, and Real Estate were all positive for the quarter. But five sectors were negative. Health Care, Communications, Tech, Discretionary, and Financials lost value. The S&P 500 Index itself was down -4.6% for the quarter despite the strength in six of 11 sectors. The five sectors that were down total over 75% of the weight in the S&P 500. Energy, up 37% for the quarter, is a paltry 3.9% of the index.

We came into this year expecting some corrective market action, owing to relatively rich valuations and the uncertainty that a midterm year brings. Thus far, the correction has been driven by higher input costs, especially energy. It’s also interesting to note that in the prior two quarters (Q3 2023, Q1 2025) that Energy was the leader, Growthy sectors like Tech, lost value. But those strong Energy quarters were followed by a quarterly drop in Energy and a surge in Tech stocks. Commodity-linked sectors have therefore struggled to hold onto their leadership trends. It remains to be seen whether this time will be different.

Chart O’ The Week

The Message from Our Indicators

The monthly jobs report showed a much needed rebound from the February report, which was negatively affected by health care strikes. The economy added 178,000 jobs, with a large reversal in health care. Importantly, job cuts remain subdued. Payroll processor, ADP, also showed a 62,000 gain in March employment. The resiliency of the labor market is key among the uncertainty for inflation and interest rates. Market participants went from pricing more Fed rate cuts in 2026, to potential rate hikes. That is likely too hawkish an expectation, but clearly, the Fed’s path has become less clear.

The labor market has a circular relationship with corporate profits. Job creation and low unemployment help to feed consumer spending, boosting corporate profits. Solid profit growth keeps firms hiring, feeding the positive cycle. We have been on watch for a circuit breaker but thus far, profits and profit expectations are strong, and the unemployment rate remains a reasonable 4.3%. So far, so good from a fundamental perspective. Strong earnings are also important in driving stock market gains for 2026. Valuations remain relatively rich, so we do not expect gains to come from expanding valuations. Analysts expect 14% earnings growth in 2026 and we will soon start getting Q1 earnings updates. We’ll be watching for signs that profit margins may be under pressure.

From a trend perspective, the long-term uptrend remains intact but clear cracks in the trend evidence became evident in the March correction. Historically, April has been a solid month and given that the market is oversold and investors are pessimistic, we may expect an April rally. We’ll be watching the quality of that rally. Unlike Q1, where there was extreme bifurcation in the market, we would want to see most, if not all, sectors gaining in unison. That would give us more confidence that the coast is clear and the bull market has resumed. If a rally attempt is narrow and unconvincing, than the chances of a steeper correction would be greater. For now, we give the bull market the benefit of the doubt but the margin for error is shrinking.

Regardless of how you celebrate it, I hope you fully enjoy this weekend so often associated with rest and renewal!

Tim

But the far more common challenge is the opposite: What do you do when your dreams outrun your dollars? This is a vital question to answer, because none of us has enough total wealth—time, influence, money, energy, and relationships—to do everything we want. Now.

Most people assume this is where financial planning becomes an exercise in limitation—scaling back expectations, lowering the bar, or quietly abandoning the dream altogether.

It doesn’t have to be.

Done well, financial planning isn’t about killing the dream. It’s about learning how to translate it. In this week’s Financial LIFE Planning installment, we’ll walk through that translation process before Tony’s Weekly Market Update gets us up to speed on a very volatile stretch for the markets.

Thanks for joining us for this week’s Net Worthwhile weekly!

Tim Maurer, CFP®, RLP®

Partner

SIGNATUREFD

In this Net Worthwhile® Weekly you'll find:

• Financial LIFE Planning:

  • Pursuing The Impossible Dream

• Quote O' The Week:

  • J.R.R. Tolkien

• Weekly Market Update:

  • The Frequency of Corrections

Financial LIFE Planning

What To Do When Your Dreams Outrun Your Dollars

In the parlance of one of the most powerful training programs I could ever recommend for a financial advisor—the Kinder Institute of Life Planning—“the impossible dream” is the term used both as an homage to Man of La Mancha and the term to describe how we navigate the challenge of dreams that appear to outrun our dollars. The good news is that there’s an exercise for this challenge, too. Let’s walk through it.

The Kinder Institute method is often referred to as EVOKE, an acronym that is even more powerful than it is memorable:
E - Explore
V - Vision
O - Obstacles
K - Knowledge
E - Execution

Why We Start Without Constraints

The method is deliberately designed to cast constraints aside for the first two steps. In the Explore phase, we ask three of the most informative (if not gut-wrenching) questions you’ve likely ever been asked to prime the pump, and in the Vision phase, we do the more expansive work of “lighting the torch” with a dream-like goal set that we imagine coming to fruition within 18 months.

In the first two phases, we deliberately remove constraints. This is not because they don’t exist, but because our default tendency is to shrink our dreams too quickly or never translate them into action at all.

This could be for any number of reasons, but especially:

• Status quo bias keeps us anchored to what is, instead of what could be

• Identity lock-in convinces us that who we are today is who we must remain

• Loss aversion makes the cost of change feel larger than the reward

When Reality Re-Enters the Room

In the Obstacles phase, we don’t challenge the dream. We protect it.

Then we ask a different question: What stands in the way?

Not our answer—the client’s. Only after they’ve named their obstacles do we carefully add any blind spots that could derail them.

But what happens when those obstacles don’t feel like speed bumps, but a wall?

What “Impossible” Actually Looks Like

Many impossible dreams show up in our work lives:

• The corporate attorney who wants to teach high school history

• The surgeon who wants to paint

• The CFO who wants to run a small nonprofit

• The financial advisor who wants to be a full-time writer or coach

Others are about major life or lifestyle shifts:

• Selling the house and moving to the Italian countryside

• Buying the family farm back

• Spending a year sailing the world while homeschooling the kids

• Going back for a theology degree

And some are about radical generosity:

• Building a school in Africa

• Getting involved as a foster parent or adopting

• Setting a “financial finish line,” where everything made in excess of what you consider your needs is given away

If this whole notion of taking a more radical approach to your financial planning is new, understand this: Every single one of the above “impossible” dreams is based on a true story. I’ve seen all of them—and more—and several have absolutely been accomplished.

The first step in managing an impossible dream is to determine whether it’s actually impossible in the first place, because it often isn’t. And there are few more energizing pursuits in wealth management than expanding what feels possible and setting a course toward it.

When the Dream Is Possible

Take a friend of mine who had a dream of sailing with his school-age children for a year.

And he did it.

For 11 months, his family became an experiential classroom under sail, starting in New Zealand.

Yes, it required a fair amount of luck—like a friend with a catamaran he wasn’t using—and a significant amount of coordination—like arranging for colleagues to absorb much of his workload. But it absolutely happened. And can you imagine the stories his kids got to tell at their next “What did you do last summer?” session at school?

This is what intentional planning makes possible—experiences most people assume are out of reach.

When the Dream Isn’t—Yet

But if you can’t do it (yet) that doesn’t mean you abandon the dream. You translate it.

Start smaller. Learn to sail this year. Get licensed as a captain next year. Charter a boat the following summer. Spend two weeks exploring the Abaco Islands.

This is where financial planning becomes less about limitation and more about sequencing.

The Power of a Test Drive

There’s another benefit to this approach: you might discover the dream isn’t actually yours. You might get seasick. Or find that you don’t love the mechanics of sailing. Or realize that your spouse doesn’t share your enthusiasm for open water.

I have another friend who was a marketing executive who dreamed of owning a coffee shop. He loved the daily interaction with baristas and the rhythm of the café. He was serious enough to test it, and a generous shop owner let him work as a barista for two weeks.

What he discovered was that only a small fraction of the job involved pleasant interactions. Most of it was fast-paced, high-pressure service, and a surprising amount of time washing dishes in the back.

He didn’t abandon the dream. He clarified it. And in doing so, avoided turning a pleasant fantasy into a costly mistake.

Don’t Kill the Dream—Translate It

Most people assume financial planning is about choosing between what you want and what you can afford.

But it’s not. It’s about refusing to let either one dominate the conversation.

If you ignore reality, your dream stays a fantasy. If you surrender to reality too quickly, your dream disappears altogether.

The work is in between. Sometimes that means discovering the dream is more possible than you thought. Sometimes it means translating it into something smaller, slower, or staged over time. And sometimes it means realizing the dream wasn’t really yours to begin with.

But in every case, the goal is the same:

Don’t kill the dream. Translate it.

Because the best financial plan isn’t the one that perfectly optimizes your money. It’s the one that gives your life its shape.

Quote O' The Week

J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973) was an Oxford professor, linguist, and author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings — widely considered the father of modern fantasy literature. What fewer people know is that beneath the world-building was a deeply romantic soul: Tolkien fell in love with his wife Edith as a teenager, was forbidden from contacting her for years, and waited. When he finally could, he wrote to her immediately. She became his Lúthien — the immortal elf-maiden who gives up eternity for love — and when they died, both their gravestones at Oxford were inscribed with the names Beren and Lúthien. He built entire worlds. But the love story was always personal.

Weekly Market Update

The markets have a lot of information to process these days, and it led to a mixed bag:

• - 2.12% .SPX (500 U.S. large companies)

• - 0.60% IWD (U.S. large value companies)

• + 0.36% IWM (U.S. small companies)

• + 1.65% IWN (U.S. small value companies)

• + 0.90% EFV (International value companies)

• + 0.07% SCZ (International small companies)

• - 0.17% VGIT (U.S. intermediate-term Treasury bonds

The Frequency of Corrections

Contributed by Tony Welch, CFA®, CFP®, CMT, Chief Investment Officer, SignatureFD

We’ve experienced something of an oil shock in the short term. The rising cost of oil has the potential to negatively impact consumer sentiment, corporate earnings, and economic growth. One interesting trend: the futures curve for oil has not shifted much in the longer term. That implies that market participants expect oil to revert back to pre-conflict pricing in the next few years.

BCA Research shows an interesting chart in which they plot the 5-year futures price for oil against the breakeven price for U.S. oil producers. It has tracked tightly since 2016. That makes intuitive sense as the U.S. has become the largest producer of oil. BCA posits that it isn’t a question of “if” oil reverts to U.S. production costs, but rather “when” it will begin to do so. There are many wildcards in the Iranian conflict, and predicting near-term moves is extremely difficult. But over the longer term, we might expect oil prices to ease, eventually bringing support to consumers. However, that could be a theme for 2027 or beyond.

Chart O’ The Week

The Message from Our Indicators

The longer the conflict with Iran presses on, the more likely it is to damage some of the bull market tailwinds that have been in place since 2022. Ned Davis Research estimates that if oil prices were to settle at their current level for the rest of 2026, it would add about 1% point to consumer inflation and detract about 0.5% points from economic growth. We already had some signs that inflationary pressures were building in the February data. That means that if inflation were to be around 3% by year’s end, oil at these levels would instead push it to about 4%. Economic growth in 2025 was about 2%. Subtracting half a percentage point may not seem like much when the economy is growing quickly, but at a 2% growth rate, it would be more meaningful. The stock market has historically struggled when inflation is accelerating and economic growth is decelerating, so these are certainly trends worth watching. For now, the economy does remain in expansion, and inflation has not broken out to problematic levels.

From a fundamental perspective, the macro dynamic could squeeze profit margins. Analysts expect double-digit earnings growth in 2026, which is important for a number of reasons. Employers typically maintain or expand employment when earnings are growing. And the stock market has tended to avoid major bear markets in the absence of earnings contraction. The extent to which margins are squeezed, by some combination of weaker sales (owing to softer economic growth) or higher input costs, matters. Much like the broad macro environment, the fundamental backdrop is positive, but we’ll be watching Q1 earnings calls for signs that analyst earnings assumptions are being challenged.

Finally, from a trend perspective, the market is oversold, and sentiment is pessimistic. We expect some form of market rally in upcoming weeks. We can watch the quality of that rally to help make an assessment regarding the rest of the year’s trajectory. We want to see strong market participation whereby most stocks, industries, and global markets rally together. We also want to watch the trend in interest rates. Stable to lower rates have been a tailwind for stocks since 2022, but rates have been moving higher in anticipation of the aforementioned inflation pressure. A reversal in the rate trend could also be a positive influence. For now, the message from our indicators suggests that we take a neutral stance toward risk.

Hoping your weekend is more positive than neutral!

Tim

When he was 17, he was driving recklessly and had a head-on collision. He learned the other driver, a woman, had broken her spine and would never walk again. He bore the weight of his irresponsibility like a heavy yoke until finally tracking her down almost 20 years later to apologize.

But when he found her, he learned two important facts:

1. She was able to walk.

2. She thought the accident was her fault.

She, too, had carried a similar burden, thinking that her distracted driving was the cause of a life-threatening experience for a young teenager.

In this week’s Financial LIFE Planning section, I explore the false precision that we often hope to gain from the exploration of our past and the projection of our future and the uncomfortable truth about what may position us better.

Thereafter, Tony Welch shares his thoughts on the price of oil and its impact on the home front.

Thanks for joining us—in between March Madness basketball games, of course!

Tim Maurer, CFP®, RLP®

Partner

SIGNATUREFD

In this Net Worthwhile® Weekly you'll find:

• Financial LIFE Planning:

  • Your Financial Past Isn’t True. Neither Is Your Future.

• Quote O' The Week:

  • Ranier Maria Rilke

• Weekly Market Update:

  • Long-Term, Oil Tracking U.S. Breakeven Costs

Financial LIFE Planning

Your Financial Past Isn’t True. Neither Is Your Future.

Do you remember the story about the downfall of NBC anchor Brian Williams? On multiple occasions, he’d shared vivid recountings of an incident when he was riding in a helicopter that was shot down in Iraq. Except that it never happened.

He was outed, and then ousted by NBC, deemed a liar by the public. But in his podcast, Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell offered a great deal more grace, dedicating an entire episode to “Free Brian Williams.”

The Malleability of Memories

He made the case that Williams likely wasn’t lying, but instead, misremembering. Gladwell wondered aloud why we insist that lapses of memory are also lapses in character.

Elizabeth Loftus’ research over 40+ years seems to further shake our convictions that our memories from the past are verbatim recordings, suggesting instead that they are often reconstructions. In her “Lost in the Mall” study, participants were given a booklet with four short stories about their childhood experiences. Three of them were sourced from family members—they were real—but one of the memories was false, suggesting that the participant had been lost in a shopping mall, frightened and crying, and eventually reunited with their family by a helpful elderly stranger.

About 25% of the participants not only “remembered” the fabricated incident; they elaborated on it, proving that we may be regularly rewriting memories even as we remember them.

And while I can totally understand why someone like Brian Williams, trusted as one of the foremost voices of objectivity, would be relieved of his duties when found to be falsifying information for any reason, it did make me wonder, at least a little, about the rock-hard accuracy of my own memories—and maybe especially the memories that have been recounted many times.

The Falsification Of Our Future

For readers bold enough to further question any false sense of precision regarding our past, Sivers also takes aim at our future.

“By definition, ‘the future’ doesn’t exist. It’s what we call predictions in our imagination. People think that the more vivid the image is in their mind, the more likely it’s real. They say, ‘I’m sure it’s going to happen. I can feel it. I can picture it now.’”

Sivers recommends that we ask ourselves (and when appropriate, others), “How confident are you in that prediction, from 0 to 100%?”

Being faced with this question immediately shifts our perspective from one of certainty to probability, requiring us to consider the implications of the options before us.

I’m curious: Do you find the likely imprecision of our past and the uncertainty of our future encouraging or disconcerting? And regardless, how can we use this information to our benefit?

I believe one of the key areas in life in which this information can be beneficially applied is in our financial planning.

Financial Planning Applications

Memory Application 1 - The Financial Identity Story

Most of us are carrying around financial headlines, either of our own making but often someone else’s, that end up mistakenly defining us:

• “I’m not good with money.”

• “He’s a miser.”

• “She’s a hoarder.”

• “I’m a saver.”

• “She’s a spendthrift.”

These “money scripts” often reside in our subconscious but drive our behavior, while also shaping our identity. These financial self-assessments were often formed in early childhood or vivid episodes later in life—a credit card spiral in our twenties, a painful investment loss, memories of parents fighting over bills—and then retold until they hardened into identity.

• For more on money scripts, check this out: out The Crazy Stuff We Do With Money—Explained.

The good news, however, is that an identity built on reconstruction can be gently examined and often revised.

Memory Application 2 - The Reconstructed Financial Trauma

Those who lived through the real estate crisis that led to the 2008-09 financial crisis remember it as an unmitigated institutional and personal catastrophe. I can vividly remember driving to the office, having just crossed the 10-year mark in my career, wondering whether I would have to find a new career, as another company that had survived the Great Depression went belly up that day.

It was truly scary for many of us, creating indelible marks in our money memories. But for many, what actually happened—at least in their portfolios—amounted to little more than a blip in a lifetime of investing. The market, as measured by the S&P 500, lost about 57% from its peak in October 2007 to its trough in March 2009, but in the 12 months that followed that low, the market gained a whopping 70%to reclaim much of its losses.

A 60/40 portfolio (S&P 500/Lehman Agg) had a max drawdown of about 25% in that same stretch, and the total time investors had to wait to go from peak to recovery was a manageable 3 years. But that’s really not how it felt and often how it’s remembered.

The lesson here is that before making a financial decision rooted in past experience, it’s worth asking: What actually happened? Not to the market, not to someone I knew, but to me? And what did I learn from that?

Future Application 1 - The Vivid Catastrophe

It doesn’t take a long look at today’s headlines to conclude that our children (or grandchildren) are screwed. Inflation is making everything more expensive, especially living expenses with doubled interest rates. Social media is rotting our brains and AI is coming for our jobs.

Or forget the kids. You may have a money script running through your mind that you’re irretrievably behind on your retirement planning, picturing yourself eating ramen and cat food in a dingy assisted living facility. You can almost taste it.

But as Derek Sivers notes, vividness is not probability. And every generation prior has laid claim to the imminent disaster that the future could hold. And the antidote isn’t to dismiss the fear, but to quantify it. How confident are you, from 0 to 100%, and then how should we plan?

The gap between the felt probability and the calculated one is often where the best financial decisions get made.

Future Application 2 - The Vivid Dream

The same distortion runs in the opposite direction, too. You may already picture the lake house, the winters abroad, and the grandchildren bounding into the house every idyllic Sunday afternoon.

But good financial planning doesn’t just plan for a future that feels like the future—it plans for a range of probable outcomes. What happens if health changes the picture, if the lake house turns out to be the wrong dream, or if the kids (and grandkids) are on two different coasts, and you’re in the heartland?

Holding the future with a slightly looser grip isn’t pessimism. It’s what makes a plan flexible and genuinely resilient.

A Final Application - For Financial Advisors

Financial psychology luminary, Dr. Ted Klontz, once told me, “You can’t always believe what you think you’ve heard.”

It sounds at first like a caution, but it’s really a call to greater attentiveness and presence in our work. When a client shares their financial history, it may well be the first time they’ve ever voiced it. Therefore, simple and strategic reflection—mirroring back to the client what we think we’ve heard—is a powerful way to help them craft a coherent narrative. And Loftus’ research also reminds us that the recounting of memories may also be the reconstruction of those narratives.

Similarly, we’ve learned from luminaries like George Kinder and Hal Hershfield that there is great power in helping our clients use their imaginations to craft a more concrete vision for their futures, lending more weight to their planning in the present. But even as we work to activate their imaginations, we must invite clients to hold onto the feelings of their desired futures, while not judging themselves on the difference between the dream and their future reality.

Conclusion

Derek Sivers spent nearly 20 years carrying a crippling story that wasn’t event true, and only discovered it by going back to look. That’s an act most of us never take with our financial past. Or our financial future.

What story have you been carrying? How confident are you — from 0 to 100% — that it’s yours to keep? And how might you reimagine your future, writing a new and motivating script, while holding loosely the outcome and planning for contingencies along the way?

BONUS: Would you believe that, way back in 2011, right around the launch of my first book, I asked Derek Sivers to write a guest post about why he chose to give his company away to charity. And he did. You can read it HERE.

Quote O' The Week

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) was a Bohemian-Austrian poet widely regarded as one of the most lyrically gifted writers in the German language, best known for Letters to a Young Poet and the Duino Elegies. He wrote with uncommon depth about solitude, beauty, suffering, and the invisible forces that shape a human life — which may be why his words have a way of feeling less like poetry and more like something you already knew but couldn’t say.

Weekly Market Update

Markets continued to struggle with war in the Middle East:

• - 1.90% .SPX (500 U.S. large companies)

• - 1.60% IWD (U.S. large value companies)

• - 1.77% IWM (U.S. small companies)

• - 1.71% IWN (U.S. small value companies)

• - 2.01% EFV (International value companies)

• - 2.45% SCZ (International small companies)

• - 0.59% VGIT (U.S. intermediate-term Treasury bonds

Long-Term, Oil Tracking U.S. Breakeven Costs

Contributed by Tony Welch, CFA®, CFP®, CMT, Chief Investment Officer, SignatureFD

We’ve experienced something of an oil shock in the short term. The rising cost of oil has the potential to negatively impact consumer sentiment, corporate earnings, and economic growth. One interesting trend: the futures curve for oil has not shifted much in the longer term. That implies that market participants expect oil to revert back to pre-conflict pricing in the next few years.

BCA Research shows an interesting chart in which they plot the 5-year futures price for oil against the breakeven price for U.S. oil producers. It has tracked tightly since 2016. That makes intuitive sense as the U.S. has become the largest producer of oil. BCA posits that it isn’t a question of “if” oil reverts to U.S. production costs, but rather “when” it will begin to do so. There are many wildcards in the Iranian conflict, and predicting near-term moves is extremely difficult. But over the longer term, we might expect oil prices to ease, eventually bringing support to consumers. However, that could be a theme for 2027 or beyond.

Chart O’ The Week

The Message from Our Indicators

Consistent with historical midterm year trends, the market has been volatile thus far in 2026. Midterm years have experienced an average correction of -19%, almost a full bear market. That’s the bad news. The good news is that following those midterm year corrections, the market has tended to experience its best 12-month performance. These corrections have typically lasted until late Summer or Fall, before giving way to a new uptrend. Consistent with recent weakness, our trend indicators have also been weakening. The bull market remains intact, but fewer stocks, industries, and global markets have been participating. The degree of trend deterioration will be something worth monitoring.

The important question amid the volatility – will corporate earnings continue to expand? That key question helps to determine whether a correction becomes a bear market. Historically, bear markets have tended to be accompanied by earnings contractions. Today, analysts are still expecting double-digit earnings growth in 2026. Rising input costs and weakening consumer sentiment are risks to those earnings expectations. But before the Iranian conflict, the economic backdrop for earnings was solid.

As far as economic data is concerned, there wasn’t much that was impactful last week. PPI inflation for February came in above economist expectations, indicating that some inflationary pressures were building before the rise in energy prices. The Fed made no change to interest rate policy given the uncertainty around inflation. They have also adjusted their expectations for cuts later in the year. They expect one or fewer cuts now. The Fed has gone from easing to a more neutral policy. That’s ok, as the economy and stock market have performed about average when the Fed has been neutral. But should the central bank turn to rate hikes, rather than cuts, that would present more of a challenge. For now, the economy is still growing, as are corporate earnings. Therefore, we’re viewing recent stock market weakness as a midterm year correction that is likely to resolve toward the end of the Summer or in the Fall, giving way to a renewed uptrend. In that environment, investors should be patient, rather than attempting to time market trends.

It’s ok if your bracket is already busted!

Tim

In the meantime, St. Patrick’s Day arrives Tuesday, so I decided to have some fun and create a video reprise of a recent post rooted in Celtic mythology and wisdom from poet David Whyte and Friar Richard Rohr. It’s about fight, flight, and a third way most of us haven’t considered, especially when money is involved. Worth a watch, even if you caught the written article the first time around.

And on the investment side, our resident market commentator Tony Welch is making the case for energy as a defensive sector in this Weekly Market Update. It’s a counterintuitive angle that’s worth your attention, particularly in a moment when “defensive” needs some rethinking.

Glad to be home. Let’s get into it.

Tim

Tim Maurer, CFP®, RLP®

Chief Advisory Officer

SIGNATUREFD

In this Net Worthwhile® Weekly you'll find:

• Financial LIFE Planning:

  • An Irish Tribute

• Quote O' The Week:

  • W. B. Yeats

• Weekly Market Update:

  • Disinflation Trend Is Something To Watch

Financial LIFE Planning

An Irish Tribute

With St. Patrick’s Day nearly upon us, it felt right to revisit this piece — rooted in Celtic myth, David Whyte, and a question worth sitting with: When conflict arises, is fighting (or fleeing) really our only options?

In this short video, I address:

• The legend of the Tuatha De Danann, the ancient pre-Celtic tribe who, when the invaders came, simply turned sideways into the light

• Why money so often becomes the great divider — in marriages, families, and institutions

• Three responses to conflict: fight, flee, and a third way most of us haven’t practiced

• A real-world example of what “turning sideways” can look like at home

References:

• David Whyte, What To Remember When Waking (audio series)

• Richard Rohr on the danger of duality and the creative tension of the third way

A question to sit with:
Is there a conflict in your life right now, financial or otherwise, where you could turn sideways into the light instead of fighting or fleeing?

And if you’d prefer the written version of this video post, please click HERE.

Quote O' The Week

Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet W.B. Yeats spent his life insisting that imagination, not force, was humanity's most revolutionary act.

Weekly Market Update

While not as dramatic a down week as the previous, we’re still in the red across the investing spectrum again this week:

• - 1.60% .SPX (500 U.S. large companies)

• - 1.37% IWD (U.S. large value companies)

• - 1.71% IWM (U.S. small companies)

• - 1.97% IWN (U.S. small value companies)

• - 2.01% EFV (International value companies)

• - 3.75% SCZ (International small companies)

• - 0.63% VGIT (U.S. intermediate-term Treasury bonds

Energy As A Defensive Sector?

Contributed by Tony Welch, CFA®, CFP®, CMT, Chief Investment Officer, SignatureFD

Pre-COVID, the economy’s biggest problem was sluggish growth, not inflation. Therefore, the Energy sector was an aggressive exposure, often underperforming during broad market corrections. But that environment changed drastically with the pandemic, its supply-chain issues, and the large infusions of consumer stimulus. Since 2020, the economic battle hasn’t been sluggish growth; rather, it has shifted to inflation.

As the chart below shows, when the S&P 500 has been in a correction since the pandemic, Energy has been an outperformer. This underscores the shift from growth concerns to inflation concerns as a correction catalyst. The Iranian conflict is further emphasizing the negative role that inflation can have on markets. The chart also should serve as a reminder that market relationships are dynamic. An investor pre-2020 may never have guessed that Energy would be a consistent outperformer when the market is weak, but times can and do change.

Chart O’ The Week

The Message from Our Indicators

As with the above, much of our communication over the past two weeks has revolved around Iran and its impact on inflation. But it’s important to note that the global economy did come into the conflict in a relatively solid position. Our friends at Ned Davis Research track global recession probability based on a robust composite of leading economic indicators, and that metric recently dropped below 13%, implying that global recession was not a high risk heading into the conflict. However, U.S.-specific data came in on the weak side last week. The first revision to Q4 GDP showed that growth was slower than initially reported, clocking in at a sluggish 0.7% annual rate. Capital goods orders were weak in January, also raising somewhat of a concern. But weak growth should not be confused with recession. There remains potential stimulus in the pipeline in the form of increased tax refunds. We will continue to monitor inflation trends as one of the bigger risks to consumer spending and, by extension, to economic growth in 2026.

Softer growth and higher inflation are threats to corporate fundamentals as the year progresses. Analysts expect earnings to come in at nearly 16% growth in 2026 on sales growth of about 7%. There are risks to the topline from softening economic growth and risks to the bottom line from margin compression should input costs exceed expectations. On average, analyst estimates are overoptimistic by about 8%, so we can already likely handicap their mid double-digit expectation as a more likely high single-digit earnings growth. The reason that is important is because we do not believe that there is much room for valuations to get more expensive, implying that the market is likely to only gain as much as earnings grow. For now, fundamentals are positive, but we need to watch how the economic data continues to unfold.

Finally, from a trend perspective, the long-term uptrend that began in 2022 remains intact, though there has been some weakening over the past two weeks. We’re particularly keyed in on market participation. We want to see a high percentage of stocks, sectors, and global markets participating in a market advance, and those metrics have clearly weakened. We’re cognizant that midterm years have tended to see deeper corrections, and therefore, volatility has been a part of those years. That doesn’t mean we should be bearish, but taking a balanced and diversified approach in 2026 makes sense.

Have a great weekend and Happy St. Paddy’s Day!

Tim

In this reading:

• The legend of the Tuatha De Danann — the ancient pre-Celtic tribe who, when the invaders came, simply turned sideways into the light

• Why money so often becomes the great divider — in marriages, families, and institutions

• Three responses to conflict: fight, flee, and a third way most of us haven’t practiced

• A real-world example of what “turning sideways” can look like at home

References:

• David Whyte, What To Remember When Waking (audio series)

• Richard Rohr on the danger of duality and the creative tension of the third way

A question to sit with:
Is there a conflict in your life right now, financial or otherwise, where you could turn sideways into the light instead of fighting or fleeing?

His goal upon taking the job was not easy, but it was simple: make partner. This would require years of grueling hours, loads of travel, abject submission to senior team members, and likely the willingness to move, perhaps more than once. But he truly loved the work, so none of those were deal breakers. And the rewards of achieving his goal of partnership were substantial, and not just financial.

The disturbing fact he’d learned, however, was that partners at the prestigious firm had a divorce rate he’d been told exceeded 70%—and my friend had just gotten married to his dream girl. And they were already talking about kids.

He purposed himself, there and then, to finding a different path to partner that would look a lot less like the workaholism that seemed to be the hallmark of his peers, and more like the life-giving balance required to be successful in multiple domains.

In this week’s Financial LIFE Planning section, I’ll take a look at what the founding father of individual psychology, Alfred Alder, had to say about workaholism (and it packs a punch). And, of course, I’ll let you know how my friend managed his career path nearly 25 years later.

And Tony tells us why the disinflation trend is something to watch in this Weekly Market Report.

Thanks for joining for this week’s Net Worthwhile weekly!

Tim

Tim Maurer, CFP®, RLP®

Chief Advisory Officer

SIGNATUREFD

In this Net Worthwhile® Weekly you'll find:

• Financial LIFE Planning:

  • The Life-Lie Of Workaholism

• Quote O' The Week:

  • Annie Dillard

• Weekly Market Update:

  • Disinflation Trend Is Something To Watch

Financial LIFE Planning

The Life-Lie Of Workaholism

“He loves his work.” “She’s so passionate about what she does.” “He was born for this, and this alone.” “She’s so competitive.” “He’s so ambitious.” “She’ll do whatever it takes to get the job done.”

These and many more pseudo-complimentary statements about those whose personal identities become synonymous with their professions obscure a truth that feels particularly absent in a world of hustle culture and LinkedIn “optimization.”

(It must also be mentioned here that the deification of workaholism tends to differ based on one’s gender. Men seem much more likely to be given a pass—or even deified—as capable “providers” where women’s ambition in the workplace is often perceived, well, differently.)

And it goes a step further, when we give safe passage (or even encouragement) to workaholics whose roles outside of the workplace have atrophied. We’ve allowed ourselves to be bifurcated—one person in the office and on the road and another person at home, in the community, or in a place of worship.

The Three Life Tasks

The book The Courage To Be Disliked has reinvigorated interest in the work of the father of individual psychology (and notable dissenter from the Freudian camp), Alfred Adler. In Courage, we’re introduced to the three primary life tasks: work, friendship, and love. We’re implored to consider that none is listed as greater than the others, that, to the contrary, one task dominating the others isn’t considered to be discipline, but imbalance.

But running contrary to these three primary life tasks are life lies.

The Workaholism Life-Lie

“Adler called the state of coming up with all manner of pretexts in order to avoid the life tasks the ‘life-lie,’” we’re told, where “one shifts one’s responsibility for the situation one is currently in to someone else.”

Wait—what?

Yes, the suggestion is that we will manufacture diversionary pretext to avoid the things we most need to confront, thereby shifting the responsibility from ourselves to someone else. Let’s look at a few examples from the book, landing on the workaholism gut punch.

The Novelist dreams of writing a bestseller but “can never find the time.” She’s been stuck in book proposal mode for, uh, years, but she’s actually not making the time because she really doesn’t want to expose her work to criticism.

The Blushing Suitor has feelings for a woman he’s deemed incapable of expressing because he can’t approach her without blushing; but the blushing is actually an alibi that helps him avoid the risk of rejection.

But are you ready for the life-lie of the workaholic? I’ll warn you in advance that it might strike a little close to home for you, as it did for me:

“Workaholics are simply trying to avoid their personal and social responsibilities by using work as an excuse.”

Sit with that for a minute.

The Risk For Financial Advisors

While I’ll not posit too far beyond my scope, I can surely address the risks involved in being a financial advisor. In our space, it’s easy for advisors to pardon our failings in personal development, community involvement, and family presence because “we carry the weight of financial anxiety for scores of families.”

This life-lie is especially dangerous because it’s rooted in a half-truth. Ours is a genuine helping profession, and the work we do can have an enormous impact on a family—and even a business that has a further impact on additional families. But does this absolve us from neglecting our own family?

I have been there: Taking on too many clients, hiding in my office, excusing my absence because “something really important came up.” And again, it is true that something important does occasionally come up in any of our professional domains that requires a deviation in plan. But if we’re smart and sophisticated enough to be the financial life guide for many families, couldn’t we just as well apply that hard-earned wisdom to the creation of ways and means to effectively manage our client loads and the rest of our lives?

It’s one of the reasons that I believe personal development is just as important for financial advisors as is their professional and business development—and this can be said of any professional domain:

Our personal development is inescapably intertwined with our professional success. Great personal development habits can be an excellent floor for professional success, and a lacking attentiveness to the social and familial domains will almost certainly be a ceiling.

Conclusion

Back to my buddy. He’s still at the same company. He’s actually one of the handful of unicorns out there who has only worked at the same company. He put his time in with the audit space and was then wise enough to pivot to the advisory domain before burnout. He made partner years ago and now has 15 to 20 partners reporting to him.

And here’s what’s so beautiful about that. He realized years ago that, regardless of the technical nature of accounting or consulting (or financial advising, I’ll add), that true success is all about relationships. He’s never lost sight of the relationships that are most important to him: his wife and three daughters. And he’s just as likely to be known as “the girl dad” or “the diehard Ravens fan” as the Big 4 partner.

And although he probably doesn’t remember any reference to Alfred Adler in Psych 101, and I don’t think he’s ever even read The Courage To Be Disliked, he has capably avoided what the book references as the greatest life-lie of all: “not to live here and now…looking at the past or the future, thinking there’s a mold you must fit into.”

He took the simple step in his twenties that all of us can choose to take at any age, of defining precisely who we want to be, personally and professionally, and then being that person.

Quote O' The Week

Annie Dillard is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and naturalist who wrote her masterwork, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, in a library carrel over eight obsessive months — reportedly discarding six pages for every one she kept.

Weekly Market Update

The markets this week, especially the international markets, got walloped, as the U.S. and Israel went to war with Iran:

• - 2.02% .SPX (500 U.S. large companies)

• - 3.46% IWD (U.S. large value companies)

• - 4.02% IWM (U.S. small companies)

• - 3.61% IWN (U.S. small value companies)

• - 7.00% EFV (International value companies)

• - 5.67% SCZ (International small companies)

• - 1.20% VGIT (U.S. intermediate-term Treasury bonds

Disinflation Is Something To Watch

Contributed by Tony Welch, CFA®, CFP®, CMT, Chief Investment Officer, SignatureFD

There are many potential implications from the Iranian conflict, but we believe that, for investors, the primary focus should be on the trend in inflation. Oil prices have been rising briskly as about 20% of the world’s fuel supply runs through the Strait of Hormuz. But other major commodities also pass through the Strait, including fertilizer, which could put upward pressure on agricultural commodities. Food and energy are often stripped out from the inflation calculation as they can be volatile, but the reality is that rising commodity costs, if sustained, do tend to find their way into core inflation eventually.

The chart below shows that this bull market, which began in 2022, has been underpinned by an easing rate of inflation. The market low occurred near the peak in the inflation rate. Note that when the rate of inflation has been falling, the S&P 500 has appreciated by 11% per year on average. When it has been accelerating, the market has dipped by -2% per year on average.

We expect the longer-term impact on commodities will likely be dictated by the length of the conflict and the tactics that Iran deploys. Should fuel and food prices run high for an extended period, we believe that would likely eliminate one of the tailwinds that the market has enjoyed since 2022.

Chart O’ The Week

The Message from Our Indicators

The market was mainly focused on Iran last week, and rightfully so. The history of conflicts like this one has seen a -5% median market correction over about two weeks, followed by about two weeks of recovery. The exceptions to the quick recovery trend have been when the economic trajectory has been altered. And there are some signs of economic softening, but most indicators point to an economy that continues to expand. Starting with the bad news, the February jobs report was a big whiff. Jobs were expected to rise by 50,000, but instead contracted by -92,000. The unemployment rate unexpectedly ticked higher to 4.4%. There may have been weather impacts, but the contraction is notable. Additionally, retail sales contracted in January by -0.2%, but that was above expectations for a -0.4% drop.

There was much better news in the purchasing managers’ indexes (PMIs) from ISM. Purchasing managers reported better-than-expected growth in February for both the manufacturing and service sectors. Jobless claims remain low, payroll processor ADP reported better-than-expected job growth for February, and productivity data was solid. The data tells a story of an economy that is likely growing at or below potential, but growing nonetheless.

Maintaining positive economic growth is important because valuations entered the year relatively stretched. If earnings were to contract, that would likely present a major headwind to stock prices. The good news is that fundamentals entered 2026 in good shape. Earnings for the S&P 500 grew 14% in aggregate in 2025. All 11 equity sectors (e.g. Tech, Financials, Industrials, etc.) saw positive earnings growth, helping to explain the strong advance last year. The sustainability of earnings growth will be an important question to answer in these next 10 months of 2026. And while analysts expect earnings to grow 16% in FY2026, inflation pressure could result in a negative impact on profit margins. In fact, analysts expect margins to expand this year, which may prove difficult. For now, corporate fundamentals are strong, but we’re watching downside risks.

From a trend perspective, the long-term bull market remains intact. -5% corrections are normal noise in the grand scheme of things, occurring an average of over three times per year. Even -10% corrections have occurred once per year. In mid-term election years, the median correction has been -19%. But these are difficult to time, and when those midterm election year corrections have resolved, it has tended to launch the strongest 12-month advance in the four-year Presidential cycle. We believe the trend evidence remains bullish for now, despite last week’s volatility.

Have a great weekend!

Tim

The whole story is a topic for another day, but I can verify what you might expect: It was an experience so powerful that more than 30 years later, there’s not a day of my life that has been lived absent the imprint of what was nearly lost.

And yet, I was struck recently with the notion that the ordinary distractions of life, when compounded by an attempt to navigate them simultaneously, often lead to a diminishment of moments that could otherwise be enjoyed, if not remarkable. The end result can be a squandering of the scarcest of all the resources we’re capable of possessing—our time.

Let’s call it what it is: a near-life experience. Present in body, elsewhere in mind.

In this week’s Financial LIFE Planning section, I’ll give you a simple example, an attempted explanation of the science behind this phenomenon, and a recommendation that will, I hope, infuse more of your precious moments with meaning. Then, Tony Welch updates on the wide dispersion in private equity returns.

Thanks for joining for this week’s Net Worthwhile weekly!

Tim

Tim Maurer, CFP®, RLP®

Chief Advisory Officer

SIGNATUREFD

In this Net Worthwhile® Weekly you'll find:

• Financial LIFE Planning:

  • Don’t Settle For A Near-Life Experience

• Quote O' The Week:

  • Anne Lammot

• Weekly Market Update:

  • Dispersion is Wide in Private Markets

Financial LIFE Planning

Don’t Settle For A Near-Life Experience

I have a precious two-year-old daughter whose very existence was the shock of a lifetime, and perhaps especially because I had plans beyond hitting the 18-year reset button in my late forties, I occasionally notice that I’m still trying to live out Plan A despite the fact that I’m neck-deep in Plan B.

The way this has often looked is that while our precocious little package is in my charge, I’ll often be doing something else. That something else almost always involves my phone, whether it is the pursuit of the elusive inbox zero, keeping a project moving forward with my more intellectually stimulating thought partner, Claude, scanning the daily load of clickbait related to the world’s apparently imminent demise (or Lamar Jackson’s forthcoming contract extension), or the more virtuous search for the next (potentially but rarely) life-changing article on Substack.

The Toddler Time Hack

Yet my toddler cannot be fooled, because she has a roughly 100% track record of intuitively knowing that she lacks my undivided attention, and thus dedicates hers to reclaiming mine.

The net result, as you might expect, is dissatisfactory for both of us, regularly resulting in a mutually agitated state, or at best, the mere passage of time.

BUT.

But when I simply give her the gift of my undistracted self, everything changes. She almost seems to revel in the glory of having all of her dad. She narrates the whole experience, processing her every thought aloud, with regular exclamations that carry us from the Play-Doh station to her magnetic blocks to her quick-change routine and regularly to the reenactment of Simba’s euphoric reveal in the opening moments of The Lion King.

In the end, it’s really quite a simple equation. If I only give a portion of myself to my daughter, we both experience something that could only be described as a near-life experience, and time moves slowly. Yet, if I give my whole self to her in these moments, it seems to unlock a real-life experience for both of us that often turns mundane moments into measurable memories that propel us swiftly through time.

The Bad News About Good News

My daughter, it turns out, isn’t just fighting for my attention. She’s fighting my neurology. And the thing about moments is that we have to work harder to create and maintain them.

I don’t have any trouble remembering my near-death experience, and the science suggests that our negative experiences in life tend to impact us more than our positive experiences.

Rick Hanson is a neuropsychologist and senior fellow at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center and has written several books, including Hardwiring Happiness: The Practical Science of Reshaping Your Brain—and Your Life. He suggests “the brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones.”

This negativity bias has helped keep us alive longer by remaining ever attentive to life-threatening situations, but it also draws our attention disproportionately to all those negative headlines and, yes, even the potential threat of the bad news email that may never come.

The marriage whisperer, Dr. John Gottman, goes so far as to suggest that we must apply the 5:1 ratio in our partnerships to maintain relational health. While acknowledging that conflict is inevitable, especially in our most intimate of attachments, “for every negative interaction during conflict, a stable and happy marriage has five (or more) positive interactions.”

It seems that we can simply expect our negative experiences to do their work, but we must be intentional about manufacturing positivity in our lives.

Awareness Breaks The Spell

Dr. Hanson gives us just the prescription for doing so: When something good happens, don’t just notice it; dwell in it for 20 or 30 seconds. “Taking in the good” allows us to savor a good experience long enough to help guide it from shorter- to longer-term memory—the same 20 or 30 seconds my daughter has been trying to give me all along.

Because the negativity bias operates most powerfully when we’re unconscious of it, the moment we notice and name the good stuff, we can gain leverage that our ancestors never had.

Attention Training

I recently took one additional step to train my attention to operate in the way I prefer. I actually paid about $50 to purchase a device that disables my phone called The Brick.

Yes, I know there may be cheaper and simpler ways to navigate the challenge that our phones pose in stealing attention from the humans we love—like just putting your phone in do-not-disturb, or better yet, the drawer. But then we also lose some of the functionality that we may well want, like the ability to accept an important phone call or, say, capture a memorable moment by taking a picture.

The Brick, therefore, allows you to create different modes and schedules that either only allow certain apps or restrict others. The schedule inspired by this near-life revelation I’ve shared with you is dubbed “Family Time,” and it disallows all the apps I don’t want to encroach on time with my wife and daughter from 5:30 pm until 8:00 am.

(I have other schedules too, like one that turns EVERYTHING off except for sleep-enabling apps when it’s time to wind down for bed; and one that I’m piloting soon called “flip phone” that will transport my phone back into the 1990s for 24 hours every Sunday.)

If I really want or need to gain access to anything disallowed, I have to walk into my home office, tap my phone against the Brick, and I’ve got the whole phone back. But I think it’s only happened one time since I installed the app. Otherwise, I’m spending my time more intentionally thanks to a device that makes my smartphone dumb.

The Life That’s Already Here

This isn’t an anti-technology post, and The Brick is no one’s savior. It’s just one person’s honest attempt to stop accidentally living a smaller life than the one that’s right in front of him.

Thirty-some years ago, I nearly lost everything. What I gained in exchange was a visceral understanding that ordinary moments aren’t ordinary at all. That understanding shouldn’t require a brush with death, and it doesn’t have to.

We don’t need a near-death experience to stop settling for a near-life one. We just need to notice what—or better yet, who—is actually in the room.

Quote O' The Week

Anne Lamott is a bestselling author and spiritual teacher who writes about faith, motherhood, and imperfection with unflinching honesty and dark humor, helping readers find grace in the messy, ordinary moments of life.

Weekly Market Update

Friday’s tumble sent the broader markets negative for the week while international markets did what they do best—help us diversify:

• - 0.58% .SPX (500 U.S. large companies)

• - 0.09% IWD (U.S. large value companies)

• - 1.03% IWM (U.S. small companies)

• - 1.79% IWN (U.S. small value companies)

• + 0.90% EFV (International value companies)

• + 0.68% SCZ (International small companies)

• + 0.65% VGIT (U.S. intermediate-term Treasury bonds

Dispersion is Wide in Private Markets

Contributed by Tony Welch, CFA®, CFP®, CMT, Chief Investment Officer, SignatureFD

This week’s chart highlights a reality that often gets lost in the “alternatives are better” narrative: dispersion is dramatically wider in private markets than in public ones. While large cap equities and bonds show relatively tight ranges of outcomes, private equity, venture capital, and even private credit exhibit a much broader spread between top and bottom quartile managers. That is the opportunity and the risk. In a narrow dispersion world, beta does most of the work. In a wide dispersion world, manager selection becomes the strategy.

Recent headlines around Blue Owl reinforce this point. Liquidity concerns tied to redemption pressures, asset sales, and changes to fund withdrawal structures have weighed on publicly traded private capital names and raised broader questions about valuation, liquidity, and retail access to these strategies. Importantly, this does not invalidate private markets as an asset class, but it does highlight that not all exposure is created equal.

Our approach is to be highly selective, focusing on partners with disciplined underwriting, aligned incentives, and demonstrated ability across cycles. In areas where outcomes can vary this widely, success to us is less about accessing the asset class and more about accessing the right managers.

Chart O’ The Week

The Message from Our Indicators

The macro backdrop continues to hold up despite uncertainty around tariff policy and the labor market impact from AI. Recent data shows U.S. growth firming, with the Chicago Fed National Activity Index turning positive and pointing to above-trend activity early in the year. Business leaders are responding accordingly, with CEO confidence jumping into net optimism for the first time in a year and signaling a willingness to invest. At the consumer level, expectations have begun to stabilize after a prolonged decline, reducing recession fears and supporting spending. Even the evolving tariff backdrop, while creating uncertainty, appears unlikely to derail global growth.

Fundamentals are still supportive, but the rate of improvement is slowing. The latest earnings season showed that while most companies continue to beat expectations, the beat rate has declined and is now the weakest since 2022, with negative year-over-year momentum. At the same time, the breadth of earnings revisions has deteriorated, and forward earnings growth expectations have begun to flatten. This is not a collapse in profits, but it does suggest that the easy phase of upside surprises is likely behind us.

Technicals and sentiment still paint a bullish, but imperfect picture. Despite some corrective action in the headline indexes, the broad market trend remains higher. But underneath the surface there has been increased rotation and divergence across sectors. Measures of market participation are still healthy, yet leadership has shifted to more defensive areas, pointing to a bit more risk aversion early in this year. At the same time, sentiment has turned notably pessimistic even as breadth remains solid, a rare combination that has historically been associated with positive, though more moderate, forward returns. In other words, we expect the market is not breaking down, but it is working harder to move higher.

Putting it all together, we believe this looks less like a market peak and more like a maturing bull market, for now. Mid-term election years have historically brought more volatility and rotation, and that is likely the environment we are entering. Periods of uneven leadership and choppier returns should be expected. However, with economic activity holding up and corporate profits still growing, the broader trend remains constructive even if the path forward is less smooth.

Constructively,

Tim

They didn’t fight. They didn’t flee. They just…vanished.

When I heard this story in David Whyte’s What To Remember When Waking, it occurred to me that in 2026, we seem to have devolved to a single approach to cultural conflict resolution—it’s all a fight, right?

Then I wondered further if we unintentionally inhabit this posture on the home front, with our partners, parents, and progeny. And especially around money.

So, this week, we’re exploring how we can turn prospective conflicts into connections, especially around the challenging topic of money. Then, our resident investment commentator, Tony Welch, takes on the topic of The Strait of Hormuz and Oil Markets.

Thanks for joining for this week’s Net Worthwhile weekly!

Tim

Tim Maurer, CFP®, RLP®

Chief Advisory Officer

SIGNATUREFD

In this Net Worthwhile® Weekly you'll find:

• Financial LIFE Planning:

  • Fight—Or Turn Sideways Into The Light?

• Quote O' The Week:

  • David Whyte

• Weekly Market Update:

  • The Strait of Hormuz and Oil Markets

Financial LIFE Planning

Fight—Or Turn Sideways Into the Light?

Money is too often the great divider—whether on an international, institutional, or interpersonal level. And yet, regardless of the inertia that seems to invite us toward insolence, there’s always another option, or better yet, options. Let’s look at a few of them:

Option 1: We Can Fight

Direct confrontation is always an option. It’s sometimes necessary, but often costly. However seemingly righteous, the full-frontal assault tends to leave wreckage in its wake, and that wake too often scores ruts in our relationships that can become difficult to steer out of.

Are you stuck in a relational rut due to the difference in the way that you and your spouse (or kids or colleagues) look at money?

And if you do find yourself in one of those relational ruts, financially rooted or otherwise, have you considered getting some help through therapy? This is a great way to bring some objectivity into the ring and create an off-ramp from those ruts.

Option 2: We Can Flee

While my own Irish heritage disinclines me to such a tendency, I’ve heard that some people naturally shut down in the midst of disagreements. (Imagine that!) And while this technique (because all of these are, whether we acknowledge it consciously or not) may help us avert a blow-up in the moment, they often lead to an underlying current of dissonance that, while not at a frequency that is audible, can become deafening over time and lead to serious divisions.

Do you or your person shut down in the face of disagreement? If you’re stuffing your alternative views down deep, this might be you—and if you seem to win every argument, it might be your counterpart.

Option 3: Turn Sideways Into the Light

As it often does, the third way looks a bit murkier, and this notion of turning sideways into the light is even more challenging, because we’re tempted to view it as the same as Option 2. But it’s not, and here’s the difference.

Fleeing is reactive, fear-driven, and leaves you smaller. But turning sideways can be deliberate, dignified, and generative. Can I give you an example that my wife and I imperfectly employ?

We have a standing weekly “Monday Meeting,” where we eat lunch together. We start with a centering prayer, sync our calendars for the next few weeks, and then address any outstanding issues that may be inclined to incite disagreement, but with a touch of distance and emotional detachment.

Here’s how this helps us turn sideways: Let’s say it’s Thursday night. We’re eating dinner, and I mention that I’m traveling for work the following Wednesday. My wife glances at her phone and sees that I never put it on our joint calendar, and that she has an event while I’m away that will now require scrambling for childcare.

She could attempt to address it right that moment, over the din of our two-year-old’s insistence that she remain the center of attention, followed by a defensive response from me about how busy I am and that it was surely Siri’s fault my trip didn’t make it into the family calendar. Then, we can escalate it, get frustrated that our daughter is frustrated, and then we have the privilege of amplifying every fine point of potential disagreement until the baby goes down, at which time we can both stand on self-righteousness and gird ourselves for an evening of iciness (at best) or a full-blown argument.

(I’m sure this has never happened—but let’s just say it did.)

OR my wife can add “Please be sure to let me know when you’re going out of town” to her (hopefully short) list of topics to discuss in our Monday Meeting, at which point our emotional responses are more muted and reason truly tends to reign.

Is there an issue you’re currently facing with someone important in your life where you could turn sideways into the light?

The Danger Of Duality

Author and contemplative Richard Rohr has done much to illuminate the dangers of duality in our world. He points out that our hearts and minds have a tendency to lump everything into only two options that often represent extremes. Yet while there are normally even more options than we could possibly imagine, he calls us to (at least) “the third way.”

“The third way,” Rohr suggests, “is not balancing or even eliminating the opposites, but holding the opposites. To live inside this space of creative tension is the very character of faith, hope, and love.”

It is fitting, then, that the people who perhaps best embodied this third way were known above all else for their creativity. Perhaps it is that same quality—for which the Tuatha De Danann have become legendarily known—that could free us from the confines of an unbalanced approach to money (and just about everything else) in our lives, our marriages, our extended families and friendships, as well as our work.

The legend further suggests that the Tuatha De Danann return from time to time to rescue the world with beauty once again.

What if our most powerful move in a financial (or other) conflict wasn’t to win, but to rescue the moment with a third way—a turning sideways into the light?

Quote O' The Week

David Whyte is a British-Irish poet and philosopher who has spent a lifetime listening at the edge where ancient myth, the natural world, and the modern human heart converge.

Weekly Market Update

Markets were up this week, mostly a result of Friday’s apparent cheering over the Supreme Court’s 6-3 rejection of Trump’s tariff strategy:

• + 1.02% .SPX (500 U.S. large companies)

• + 0.64% IWD (U.S. large value companies)

• + 0.64% IWM (U.S. small companies)

• + 0.48% IWN (U.S. small value companies)

• + 0.62% EFV (International value companies)

• + 0.55% SCZ (International small companies)

• - 0.12% VGIT (U.S. intermediate-term Treasury bonds

The Strait of Hormuz and Oil Markets

Contributed by Tony Welch, CFA®, CFP®, CMT, Chief Investment Officer, SignatureFD

Crude oil has moved higher to start the year, rising roughly 16% as geopolitical tensions tied to Iran have increased. Prediction markets are assigning a higher probability to a potential U.S. military strike, even as diplomatic discussions have shown some signs of progress. At the same time, the U.S. has expanded its military presence in the region in a meaningful way. Markets appear to be weighing these conflicting signals and are beginning to price in a degree of risk, evident in the oil rally.

The focus remains on the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint through which roughly 20% of global petroleum supply flows. As the chart below highlights, this exposure has remained relatively steady over time. In most scenarios, including continued negotiations or a limited military action, the impact on oil prices would likely be temporary. The more disruptive outcome would involve a broader escalation that threatens energy flows through Hormuz, potentially tightening global supply more materially.

For now, markets are reflecting awareness rather than alarm. Near-term oil prices have risen relative to longer-dated contracts, suggesting some short-term concern, but not a sustained supply shock. Just as important, there has been no meaningful change in tanker traffic through the region. That is often a more reliable signal than sentiment. We are monitoring this closely, but at this stage, the environment points to elevated risk rather than active disruption.

Chart O’ The Week

The Message from Our Indicators

Last week, we got important updates on economic growth and inflation. The latest GDP report showed a step down in headline growth, but the composition remains more constructive than the top-line suggests. Private demand, particularly consumer spending and select areas of investment, continues to carry the expansion, while more volatile components have distorted the aggregate number. This aligns with what we are seeing across our indicators: momentum is slowing from above-trend levels, but there is little evidence yet of a broad-based contraction.

The most recent PCE data show inflation remaining sticky around the 3% level, keeping the Fed in a holding pattern. Services inflation remains the key friction point, and while it is improving directionally, it has not slowed enough to justify a near-term policy shift. The implication is a longer window of “higher for longer” policy than markets had priced late last year, even as the overall trajectory remains disinflationary.

From a market perspective, the more interesting development has been beneath the surface. Market breadth has been solid, and there has been a notable shift in leadership. Global equities, particularly international and value-oriented segments, have begun to outperform U.S. large caps on the margin. At the same time, sentiment indicators have moved in a pessimistic direction owing to the weaker performance of megacap Growth stocks. This is typically a constructive setup from a technical perspective. In other words, markets appear to be transitioning from a narrow, momentum-driven advance toward a broader participation phase.

On trade policy, the recent Supreme Court decision striking down the use of IEEPA as a legal basis for broad tariffs is an important development, but we believe it should be interpreted narrowly. The ruling limits one specific mechanism, not the broader ability to implement tariffs. Other pathways remain available, including established authorities tied to national security or unfair trade practices, each with its own procedural requirements. From a market standpoint, this reduces the immediacy of sweeping tariff actions through that channel, but it does not remove trade policy as a variable going forward.

Putting it together, our indicators continue to point toward a late-cycle expansion characterized by moderating growth, gradually easing inflation, and improving market breadth. Risks remain, particularly around policy and geopolitics, but we continue to give the bull market the benefit of the doubt.

The Olympics may be almost over, but hey, football season is only, uh, six months away, right?

Tim

You may find this to be especially true of what you read on my two preferred content platforms, Substack and LinkedIn. One of the reasons they are two of my favorites, by the way, is that they tend to feel a touch more personal or purposeful (respectively) than many of the others that often feel like nothing more than manufactured algorithmic clickbait.

Yet, if I spend more than a few minutes on either, I’m increasingly feeling like that which I’m consuming is all three: manufactured, algorithmic, and clickbait.

In this week’s Net Worthwhile weekly, I’m exploring something I love dearly—reading and writing—and how a transactional approach to these practices custom designed to get us to buy products and services has diminished the value of our online conversations.

I’ll suggest a new equation that I hope will breathe more life into how you approach our online communication, whether you’re acting as a creator or consumer.

Thanks for joining me this weekend!

Tim

Tim Maurer, CFP®, RLP®

In this Net Worthwhile® Weekly you'll find:

• Financial LIFE Planning:

  • Content < Connection > Conversion

• Quote O' The Week:

  • Bob Marley

• Weekly Market Update:

  • International > US (this week)

Financial LIFE Planning

Content < Connection > Conversion

A Better Equation For Satisfying Reading, Writing, And Business Development

I think we all know what clickbait is and feels like now—a compelling (if not manipulative) headline that isn’t substantiated within the actual body of the post or article. It’s designed to increase a content creator’s ad revenue, not to inform. Big hat, no cattle, as my Texan friends would say.

By algorithmic, I mean content that is either promoted or suppressed (the latter of which this post is almost sure to inspire!) for the sake of the platform, not the reader. Substack, for example, would definitely be my favorite social platform if every fifth post wasn’t a surely-promoted post extolling the never-ending virtue of the platform itself. And as for suppression, did you know that the LinkedIn algorithm will give your post a demerit if there’s a link outside of LinkedIn in the post?

But the real issue I’m attempting to address here is manufactured content, because while we may be able to use our knowledge of clickbait and algorithms for our benefit or that of our enterprises, we really don’t have any control over it. We do, however, have control over manufactured content.

So, What’s Manufactured Content?

Manufactured content is that which is not designed primarily for the purpose of its inherent existence (good art, if you will) or for the primary benefit of its recipient, but instead for the benefit of the content generator.

It is content that is not composed primarily in service of those who read it, but for those who wrote it. Yes, of course it’s the thinly veiled self-congratulatory “I’m honored to be so awesome” post and the plea-for-sympathy “Can you believe what I’ve overcome?” post. But it’s also the horde of less obvious posts for which the purpose of getting you to do something for—or buy something from—the author preceded the actual message.

AI is currently taking a beating for a lot of this, and not without reason—it truly is threatening to drown out whatever genuine content exists. But the tool of AI is not to be blamed for the intentions of the humans who deployed it. Those same humans were simply writing less (and less articulate) content two years ago.

This Isn’t Anti-Sales

But please note, this is not a plea for content so singularly produced for the benefit of its readership that it would qualify for the most virtuous of non-profit status.

The real question is: What is the primary purpose of this content?

If the primary purpose is to tell an amazing story, make us laugh, inspire us, educate us, or make us healthier, wealthier, or wiser, and the secondary purpose is to let us know that someone is gainfully employed in a pursuit that could lead to a mutual benefit, we’re good!

I don’t have a problem with content marketing. I do, however, have a problem with marketing masquerading as content.

And if the unveiled purpose is to get us to buy something? I don’t have a problem with that either. I love a good sales pitch. But nobody loves getting fooled, and I don’t believe that fooling people is a sustainable business model.

Building The Best Hotel In the World

While so much online content these days leaves us feeling empty, I enjoyed a pleasant surprise this week when I attended my local Rotary meeting, fully expecting some sustenance, fellowship, and a touch of inspiration from a speaker, when I learned that the person giving the 20-minute talk was none other than Horst Schulze.

If that name doesn’t ring a bell, Horst was the founding president and COO of The Ritz-Carlton, whose motivation to leave one of the world’s largest hotel brands for that gig was singular: to create the best hotel brand in the world. But that’s not the point.

Starting in the hospitality business at the age of 14 in Germany, he was trained in delivering what the Ritz has surely become known for: excellence. And that’s also not the point, because what Horst learned when he was still a teenager, long before he even moved to the United States or launched the first Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta’s Buckhead enclave, was that excellence for its own sake wasn’t enough.

It needed to be excellent for a purpose—in this case, the purpose of elevating people and making people feel elevated. Before choosing to embark on this journey, he asked the following questions:

• Would it be good for the patrons?

• Would it be good for the employees?

• Would it be good for the investors?

• Would it be good for society?

(A person of faith, he also asked the question, “Would God approve?”)

So it certainly wasn’t being the biggest that inspired him, and you can see that he had a very clear vision of what it even meant to be the best. It wasn’t just to be the best—it was to be the best for something, and in this case, that something was the people it served and employed.

Content < Connection > Conversion

Which brings us circuitously back to the point of this communication. The world doesn’t need any more content. We’re awash in content. Some of it is created by humans, some by robots at the behest of humans, and some that is created by robots at the behest of robots.

While it might consume it, the world doesn’t need just another blog post, podcast, or video.

What the world does need—perhaps more than ever—is more genuine connection. And the really cool thing is that great, genuine content does, indeed, help us connect.

Now, here’s the trick: Some great content connects, but for the primary purpose of conversion.

It might be for the purpose of converting someone to buy your product or service—or to buy your religion, or your political stance or whatever else.

And I believe that cheapens the content and diminishes, if not destroys, the connection.

So Why Not Do Better?

Horst Schulze didn’t set out to build a business. He set out to make people feel like they mattered—and a great business was the result. The content followed the connection, and the conversion followed both.

That’s the equation: Content < Connection > Conversion. Connection isn’t a step in the funnel. It’s the point. When it is, the content gets better—because it’s honest. And the conversion follows—because it’s earned.

It’s worth noting that even the companies building the AI tools flooding our feeds with manufactured content are beginning to figure this out. Netflix recently posted a communications role paying up to $775,000. Anthropic tripled the size of its communications team last year. OpenAI is hiring writers at $400,000. LinkedIn job postings mentioning “storyteller” doubled between 2024 and 2025. The companies that taught machines to write are paying a premium for humans who can connect.

So if you’re reading this and wondering what to write next, or say next, or post next—maybe don’t start with “What will get engagement?” or “What will convert?”

Start with the question Horst asked before he built the best hotel in the world: Would this be good for the people it’s meant to serve?

If the answer is yes, the rest tends to follow.

Work with Tim and Tony

Quote O' The Week

Bob Marley (1945–1981) was a Jamaican singer, songwriter, and musician who became one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, bringing reggae music and Rastafari philosophy to a global audience. His songs of love, resistance, and spiritual freedom have transcended generations — and so, it seems, have words he may or may not have actually spoken. This quote, like several others widely attributed to Marley, has no verified source. But perhaps that's fitting for a man whose message was always bigger than the messenger.

Weekly Market Update

Only international markets were spreading the LOVE this week:

• - 1.39% .SPX (500 U.S. large companies)

• - 0.38% IWD (U.S. large value companies)

• - 0.78% IWM (U.S. small companies)

• - 0.17% IWN (U.S. small value companies)

• + 1.01% EFV (International value companies)

• + 1.93% SCZ (International small companies)

• + 0.82% VGIT (U.S. intermediate-term Treasury bonds

Our resident market analyst will be back with us next week, surely providing us with two weeks’ worth of insight!

Tim

And while this warning may well apply to situations where a transactional salesperson offers something of lesser value to entice you into purchasing something far more expensive, that’s not the whole story. In fact, I believe this underlying notion—which effectively presumes “everyone is out to get you”—creates a host of missed opportunities, both to give and receive invaluable insights that could change the course of your academic path, your career, and your life.

I’ll discuss that in this week’s Financial LIFE Planning section, including offering 3 ways to get free lunches and 3 ways to give free lunches. Tony’s Weekly Market Update follows with some insight into why more stocks are beating the index.

Thanks for joining for this week’s Net Worthwhile weekly!

Tim

Tim Maurer, CFP®, RLP®

Chief Advisory Officer

SIGNATUREFD

In this Net Worthwhile® Weekly you'll find:

• Financial LIFE Planning:

  • There Actually IS A Free Lunch

• NWWW Podcast (New!)

  • A Cold Call And A Life-Changing Invitation

• Quote O' The Week:

  • Brené Brown

• Weekly Market Update:

  • More Stocks Beating The Index

Financial LIFE Planning

There Actually Is A Free Lunch

It was poet and author David Whyte who confronted me with the relative absurdity of the free lunch maxim. He suggests that from the time of our birth, most of us receive loads of freebies without any expectation of reciprocity.

The Invisible Help All Around You

Our very navigation from conception to independent adulthood involves an enormous amount of freely given meals, clothing, shelter, and the best life lessons our parents could offer.

If, like me, you attended public school, the foundation of your knowledge was also gratis. And even if you prefer the cynical argument that taxes paid for it, consider those teachers, administrators, and coaches who went the extra mile—giving us far more than their job descriptions required. (Plus, your parents definitely paid less than neighbors who chose the private school path.)

Thanks to the illumination of folks like Ron Lieber, author of The Price You Pay For College, we’ve learned that even the priciest higher education can also cost far less than sticker price.

And despite how much any of us prefer to believe our career success is ours alone, take ten seconds to think of a solid handful of people (it’s probably scores if you take a few minutes) upon whose shoulders you’ve stood to reach those higher rungs on the occupational ladder.

Whyte asks the potent question: “Are you turning a blind eye to the invisible help that is all around you?”

I don’t think this is designed as an indictment, but an invitation. Let’s look at a few of those invitations now.

3 Ways To Get Free Lunches

1) Be Open To Free Help

The first thing we must do to benefit from the many free lunches out there is be open to free help. A few amazing people taught me this lesson before I’d even entered the professional world. One was Ernie Kiehne, a name that may only be known to students of investing in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

Ernie Kiehne was a Bell Labs employee and client of the (then) brokerage firm Legg Mason, based in my hometown of Baltimore. As legend goes, the firm noticed their client was outpacing the professional stock pickers, so they offered him a job. He joined Legg Mason in 1967 and co-founded the Legg Mason Value Trust with famed investor Bill Miller in 1982.

Yet Kiehne continued working at the firm well into what “should’ve” been his retirement. He came to speak in a large lecture hall for one of my investing classes at Towson University in 1998. He seemed so genuine that I called Legg Mason the next day and asked to speak with him—and he invited me to visit.

Still reeking of the previous night’s foolishness in the one suit I owned, I clumsily found my way to his office with the best view of Baltimore I can recall seeing, and he started asking questions—mostly about me and my family.

Shortly after, he made a phone call and I had a job—my first “real” job—at the most reputable financial firm in my hometown. About a year later, I ran into Kiehne on the elevator. He treated me like I was the rock star in that elevator car, and even asked about my family members. By name.

Having received such unwarranted generosity so early in my career, I’ve since made it a habit to simply ask to meet with interesting people—and to answer affirmatively as often as possible to the requests I receive.

Sometimes, we just have to be open to free help. The only cost is laying down our pride or penchant for individualism.

P.S. Ernie Kiehne lived and worked and kept spreading the love into his 90s, passing away in 2010.

2) Take Advantage of Free Educational Resources

Sure, there’s plenty of “freemium” content on the internet worth little more than we pay, and plenty that fits the no-free-lunch stereotype as marketing bait. BUT, there’s also a ton of free or nearly-free content that could be the basis of your next evolutionary step.

For example:

• One of the most popular courses in the world is Harvard’s CS50: Introduction to Computer Science. For $219, you can take the class and receive a certificate; or for ZERO dollars, you can audit the 12-week course.

• Or check out Stanford’s extensive free online course options, including “Physics-Based Sound Synthesis for Games and Interactive Systems.”

• And you can find an endless free course list from top universities and companies on EdX.org or ClassCentral.com.

3) Leverage AI and Digital Tools

Without question, the free (or nearlyfree) lunch I’ve benefited from most over the past year comes from my 24/7 learning, research, and development partners: Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini.

I prefer the nearly-free versions that let me customize inputs and outputs to maximize computational capabilities, but I genuinely couldn’t pay someone a six-figure salary to be as effective a research assistant as I’ve found well-trained AI agents to be.

3 Ways To Give Free Lunches

And yet, it’s quite possible that the most substantial benefits to be gained from free lunches come not through their consumption, but their delivery. While I don’t believe anyone can claim to know the right or wrong ways to do this, we have received some evidence-based guidance on how to do it most effectively.

1) Give Strategically

In his best-selling book Give And Take, Adam Grant examines three workplace archetypes: Givers, Matchers, and Takers.

Perhaps you won’t be surprised that Givers tend to be the highest performers long-term. But they’re also the lowest performers!

Grant splits givers into “selfless givers”—who give regardless of circumstances, say yes to everything, and are most prone to burnout—and “otherish givers” who care about benefiting others but also maintain their own goals and balance.

While finding this balance is often learned through experience (as we intuit which giving opportunities have more mutually generative power), a great way to develop this habit is to calendarize your giving. Set aside specific times each week dedicated to literally taking someone to a free lunch or coffee—perhaps baking these into your Calendly or calendar management system.

2) Give Without The Expectation Of Reciprocity

While our first point acknowledged that the most effective giving isn’t mindless, it doesn’t change the fact that optimal giving is done without expecting reciprocity.

“If we create networks with the sole intention of getting something, we won’t succeed,” says Adam Grant. “We can’t pursue the benefits of networks; the benefits ensue from investments in meaningful activities and relationships.”

There’s another benefit to this free giving: we don’t waste mind space on a giving “scorecard.” Keeping track of who owes us something isn’t a giving mindset, but a matching mindset that often devolves into taking.

Perhaps there’s something to the spiritual guidance passed down through millennia: give freely as you have received freely.

3) Give In Ways That Create Compound Returns

“Whereas success is zero-sum in a group of takers,” Adam Grant continues, “in groups of givers, it may be true that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”

How? Check out this mic-drop conclusion:

“Research shows that people tend to envy successful takers and look for ways to knock them down a notch. In contrast, when givers win, people are rooting for them and supporting them rather than gunning for them. Givers succeed in a way that creates a ripple effect, enhancing the success of people around them.”

Mo Bunnell, a business development consultant and author of Give To Grow, summarizes it thusly:

“A great deal might make your year, but a great relationship can make your entire career.”

One of the best “free lunches” I’ve given or received is a personal introduction. This natural compounding costs $0.00.

Conclusion

What is it about us that seems to want to claim everything we’ve benefited from in life as something we’ve earned?

I’m reminded of a quote from the late Dallas Willard, former Director of the School of Philosophy at the University of Southern California:

“Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action.”

We all need grace, don’t we?

Consider this final encouragement from David Whyte in his poem, What To Remember When Waking:

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,

you are not an accident amidst other accidents

you were invited from another and greater night

than the one from which you have just emerged.”

What would you think of offering—and asking for—a free lunch in the week to come?

NWWW Podcast (New!)

A Cold Call And A Life-Changing Invitation

In this week’s episode, Tim shares the story of a cold call that changed his career—and why having the audacity to ask for help opened doors he never imagined.

• Why the “no free lunch” maxim misses a crucial truth

• The danger of dualities (thanks to Richard Rohr and David Whyte)

• How a college student’s naïve phone call led to a job

Work with Tim and Tony

Quote O' The Week

Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston who has spent over two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. Her 2010 TEDx Houston talk, "The Power of Vulnerability," is one of the top five most-viewed TED talks in the world with over 60 million views. She's the author of six #1 New York Times bestsellers, including Dare to Lead and The Gifts of Imperfection.

Weekly Market Update

For the second straight week, small, value, and international companies outpaced the big dogs:

• - 0.10% .SPX (500 U.S. large companies)

• + 2.14% IWD (U.S. large value companies)

• + 2.07% IWM (U.S. small companies)

• + 3.32% IWN (U.S. small value companies)

• + 3.30% EFV (International value companies)

• + 1.79% SCZ (International small companies)

• - 0.00% VGIT (U.S. intermediate-term Treasury bonds

More Stocks Beating The Index

Contributed by Tony Welch, CFA®, CFP®, CMT, Chief Investment Officer, SignatureFD

After several years where stock selection offered little reward, owing to a select set of megacap U.S. stocks driving the majority of the environment has shifted meaningfully. In 2026, a growing share of S&P 500 stocks are outperforming the index itself, a clear signal that market leadership is broadening.

When Ned Davis Research first highlighted this trend in late January, roughly 62% of S&P 500 stocks were beating the index, one of the highest readings since the early 2000s. Updated data shows that figure has continued to climb, reinforcing that this is not a short-lived rebound but an improving participation trend.

Historically, very high readings can coincide with more mixed outcomes for the index, especially when paired with defensive leadership. More moderate, rising breadth has typically been associated with healthier market conditions. From a portfolio perspective, this shift matters; returns are becoming less concentrated, providing opportunities in smaller companies, international markets, and value-oriented market segments.

In short, this chart does not argue that the bull market is over. It suggests the market is evolving, with leadership broadening beyond a narrow group of names, a constructive backdrop for diversification and selective risk-taking.

Chart O’ The Week

The Message from Our Indicators

Our partners at Ned Davis Research took a look at the importance of inflation’s effect on economic growth and asset performance last week. Economic growth and stock market performance have tended to be stronger when inflation has been below 4%, as it is now. Historically, relatively low inflation has supported lower bond yields, which support both the economy and stock market valuations. Fortunately, their indicators continue to emphasize that the backdrop for inflation is largely benign. Measures tied to disposable personal income and unit labor costs suggest future inflation could be close to the Federal Reserve’s longer-term objectives than recent headline numbers might imply. At the same time, NDR highlights some countervailing risks. The sharp decline in the U.S. dollar and firmer commodity prices introduce the potential for stickier inflation, particularly through higher import costs. The takeaway is not a re-acceleration of inflation, but rather a slower and uneven path lower, not likely to be a headwind for investors.

Labor market data reinforce an economic moderating narrative. Job openings have declined to their lowest level since 2020, the ratio of openings to unemployed workers continues to fall, and hiring plans have softened. Layoff announcements have increased, particularly in larger firms, although actual jobless claims remain within historical ranges. Labor demand appears to be cooling, which typically dampens wage growth and reduces inflation pressure, even if the unemployment rate itself rises only gradually.

That softer labor backdrop is increasingly visible in consumer sentiment. The University of Michigan’s preliminary February survey showed sentiment essentially unchanged from January and still very low by historical standards. Importantly, confidence gains remain concentrated among households with significant stock market exposure, while sentiment for consumers without equities remains depressed. Concerns about job security and the erosion of purchasing power from elevated prices persist, even as year-ahead inflation expectations eased modestly to their lowest level in over a year.

From a trend perspective, there has been a sustained rotation away from the large Tech names that have driven the majority of index gains since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, and into other market segments like Value stocks, international markets, and small caps. Market breadth has improved, but that does not necessarily mean that headline index gains will be strong. If the rotation persists and megacap stocks struggle, smaller market segments can rally while cap-weighted indexes like the S&P 500 struggle to gain traction. For now, we give the bull market the benefit of the doubt owing to contained inflation, stable interest rates, solid earnings, and positive economic growth. But we are cognizant of a weakening labor market.

Enjoy the Super Bowl tonight! (I think you probably know who I’m not rooting for.)

Tim

In this week’s episode, Tim shares the story of a cold call that changed his career—and why having the audacity to ask for help opened doors he never imagined. From parenting to public education to legendary investor Ernie Kiehne’s generosity, Tim and Tony explore the invisible help all around us and how we can both receive and give “free lunches” that create ripple effects for years to come.

In this episode:

• Why the “no free lunch” maxim misses a crucial truth

• The danger of dualities (thanks to Richard Rohr and David Whyte)

• How a college student’s naïve phone call led to a job at Legg Mason

• Ernie Kiehne’s legendary generosity—and why he remembered family names a year later

• Three practical “free lunches” you can take advantage of today (AI, online courses, and asking for help)

• The simple practice of calendaring generosity

Key Question: What free lunch can you give away next week? And who might you ask for one from?

Resources Mentioned:

• David Whyte (poet and business consultant)

• Richard Rohr on dualities

• Free online courses from Harvard, MIT, Yale, and Google

• AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT

A new Vanguard study shows seemingly clear evidence of what investors most want to gain from their work with a financial advisor: peace of mind.

But even a thoughtful piece in The Journal of Financial Planning, attempting to define what that is and how the advisor/client combo can achieve it, left me unsatisfied. I think we need to go beyond the realm of the tangible to find insight into how best to achieve something that will never show up on a balance sheet or portfolio statement.

Our journey in search of peace of mind begins in North Africa in the 5th Century AD in this week’s Financial LIFE Planning submission, followed by Tony’s Weekly Market Update, exploring the future trajectory of policy rates.

If you’re on the Eastern seaboard of the U.S., it’s likely you’re experiencing a second weekend of historically low temps and winter weather, so I hope you stay warm and read on!

Thanks,

Tim

Tim Maurer, CFP®, RLP®

Chief Advisory Officer

SIGNATUREFD

In this Net Worthwhile® Weekly you'll find:

• Financial LIFE Planning:

  • Study Shows What Clients Want Most From Advisors

• Quote O' The Week:

  • Simone Weil

• Weekly Market Update:

  • The Future Trajectory Of Policy Rates

Financial LIFE Planning

Study Shows What Clients Want Most From Advisors

Somewhere between 413 and 426 AD, Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, addressed the cataclysmic event that shocked the whole world: the sack of Rome by the Visigothic leader, Alaric.

Tranquillitas Ordinas

But what may have begun as a defense of Christianity (for there was a movement to blame the fall of Rome on the abandonment of the Roman gods) became a treatise on how to seek and find an abiding peace. Peace of the body, peace of the soul, peace with fellow man, peace with God, domestic peace, civil peace, and the peace from which all of these spring—peace in all things, tranquillitas ordinas, or the tranquility of order.

And is it not true, some 1,600 years later, that a well-ordered life brings an uncommon calm amid what is often a chaotic world beyond us?

When we have a semblance of order in our homes, our relationships (both human and divine), our work, and yes, our money, tranquility seems to follow.

But we need to be more specific, don’t we, to better understand how we can find this overarching sense of order in our financial management that leads to this elusive peace of mind. Here are four pillars of peace, if you will, supported by philosophy and behavioral science, that both clients and advisors can deliberately pursue:

Pillar 1: Predictability

We need only go back 26 years in this case, to Baker and Stephenson’s work on “Prediction and Control as Determinants of Behavioural Uncertainty,” which suggests that it’s not certainty that is required to reduce our heart rate in adverse situations, but comprehensible uncertainty.

That’s good, because anything that involves financial markets involves inherent uncertainty; but what the research suggests is that we still feel calmer when we know what typically happens in certain situations, even if it’s a range of possibilities.

As advisors, we also know negative outcomes and their anticipation tend to have a more potent impact on our clients than positive possibilities and realities, so it suggests that we should dedicate a disproportionate effort to ensuring our clients understand the potential for downside than its more welcome inverse.

As advisors, we can follow Thich Nhat Hanh’s suggestion to “climb the mountain to look over the whole situation, not bound by one side or the other,” but to do so as a seasoned guide, pointing out the details and dangers of which our clients may not be aware.

But in order to be the most effective guides, our clients must believe in our competence, the second pillar.

Pillar 2: Fidelity

This one is tricky because it involves at least three components—competence, integrity, and benevolence—that require harmonization. Think of it this way: Peace of mind emerges when clients trust that their advisor’s competence is faithfully directed toward their best interests.

Yes, our clients need to know that we are competent, yet not for our sakes, but theirs. Therefore, a simple trumpeting of our superlatives will not do. We need to demonstrate our competence as much (and I’d argue more) through the space we create and the questions we ask than the resumes we’ve built.

And no matter how competent we are, if clients don’t know that we are truly trustworthy—integrous for them—it’s all for naught. A very recent study, “Behavioral Trust in Competence Versus Morality,” found that there is a general social norm against questioning someone’s moral integrity openly; but we do scrutinize competence.

It’s possible, I suppose, to be an incompetent fiduciary or a highly skilled selfish jackass, and our clients want neither. So, it becomes our job to demonstrate fidelity by showing competence deployed for our clients, not for ourselves.

But once we’ve established fidelity with a client, how can we directly support our clients’ peace of mind through our client experience?

Pillar 3: Visibility

Anxiety decreases when people can see the work being done and the logic behind it, and there are two ways we can navigate this effectively:

• Proactive uncertainty reduction: anticipating what will happen and why

• Retroactive uncertainty reduction: explaining what happened and connecting it to the framework

Behavioral finance professor and author, Dan Ariely, found that consumers are more confident when they understand the reasoning, not just the outcome. And this is where, I believe, the financial industry has done an exceptionally poor job.

The industry proper has created innumerable financial products and provided explanations ad nauseum for the features of those products. But how about connecting the dots for clients?

Even when this is done, the discussion often starts with the product rather than the purpose—the client’s purpose—and I believe if there is a single lesson to be learned from applied behavioral finance within wealth management, it is that we must perpetually connect the client’s personal purpose with the recommendations being made, regularly seasoned by gentle but persistent reminders.

The Vanguard study referenced above does suggest that “support” is the number one driver of peace of mind, but I think clients want (and need) more than just simple knowledge that someone is at the wheel. They need visibility in action, and one more key pillar for lasting peace of mind.

Pillar 4: Agency

Peace of mind increases when people have meaningful input into the process. Clients want participation without the burden of expertise. They want to see their own instincts and ingenuity considered and, whenever possible, confirmed and catalyzed.

The key insight from Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior (1991, 2002) is that people feel better and behave more consistently when they perceive they could influence the process, even if they choose to delegate execution. And we can design client experiences to ensure that there are decision points where client input genuinely matters and shapes the plan.

Gable and Chin took it one step further to suggest that the consultant’s motivation to involve the client is as important as the client’s own desire for involvement. And here’s where we see clearly that these four pillars don’t operate in silos, but in concert.

The Four Pillars Working Together

These four pillars don’t operate in isolation. They create a reinforcing cycle:

When clients understand what to expect (Predictability) and trust that your competence serves them (Fidelity), they can relax into the process. When they see your work happening (Visibility) and have a genuine voice in decisions (Agency), they feel respected and in control. Predictability plus Visibility means they understand both the framework and its execution. Fidelity plus Agency means they trust your judgment enough to delegate, while maintaining the meaningful participation that humans naturally crave.

Together, these four pillars create what Augustine described nearly 1,600 years ago: tranquillitas ordinis—the tranquility that emerges when the affairs of one’s life are rightly ordered. Not controlled, but ordered. Not certain, but comprehensible and faithfully managed.

As financial advisors, we are not in the business of guaranteeing returns (of course!) or eliminating uncertainty. We are in the business of creating order. By honoring these four pillars—by making the future comprehensible, by directing our competence faithfully toward our clients’ interests, by showing our work, and by respecting our clients’ voice in their own futures—we create conditions from which peace of mind can emerge.

We are, in essence, helping order their financial lives in a way that reflects their deepest values and prepares them for what lies ahead. And when that order is established, the peace Augustine described—not the absence of challenge, but the presence of purpose and care—follows.

Quote O' The Week

Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a French philosopher, mystic, and social critic whose brief but intellectually fierce life produced writings of extraordinary depth. Working across philosophy, theology, and social commentary, she explored the fundamental conditions necessary for human flourishing—order, meaning, and spiritual sustenance. Her insights on the architecture of the soul remain as relevant to contemporary life as they were eight decades ago.

Weekly Market Update

Mixed markets this week, as larger companies (the world over) outshined their smaller counterparts:

• + 0.34% .SPX (500 U.S. large companies)

• + 0.63% IWD (U.S. large value companies)

• - 1.95% IWM (U.S. small companies)

• - 0.89% IWN (U.S. small value companies)

• + 2.05% EFV (International value companies)

• - 0.33% SCZ (International small companies)

• + 0.18% VGIT (U.S. intermediate-term Treasury bonds

The Future Trajectory Of Policy Rates

Contributed by Tony Welch, CFA®, CFP®, CMT, Chief Investment Officer, SignatureFD

We learned late last week that President Trump is nominating Kevin Warsh for Fed Chair (more below). The process remains somewhat hairy owing to the recent DoJ subpoena of Jay Powell, but assuming he is confirmed, Warsh would be the 17^th chair. And though a popular narrative is that Warsh is a hawk, Strategas Research points out that his views are more nuanced than that. He believes that the U.S. economy is experiencing a productivity boom in which rates can be lower without stoking inflation.

One interesting chart is the apparent correlation between changes in Fed chair height and interest rates. As Fed chairs continuously came in shorter than Volcker, rates were falling. Jay Powell bucked that trend of progressively shorter chairs and wouldn’t you know it, rates moved sustainably higher for the first time since Volcker’s tenure! Warsh is shorter than Powell, so just maybe we’ll get a new period of lower rates in the years ahead.

Chart O’ The Week

Source: Strategas Research Partners

Work with Tim and Tony

The Message from Our Indicators

Recent data continue to describe an economy that is cooling from a strong pace rather than breaking down, with several crosscurrents worth keeping in context. One of the most visible has been the weakening U.S. dollar. While currency moves often attract dramatic interpretations, history suggests that periods of dollar softness more often align with global economic expansions than with stress. As growth broadens outside the U.S., capital flows tend to normalize and the dollar loses some of its safe-haven premium. That appears consistent with today’s environment, where global recession indicators remain subdued and non-U.S. equity markets are seeing improved participation. Importantly, a weaker dollar by itself does not guarantee stronger U.S. growth; trade benefits tend to be modest and secondary to domestic demand and productivity trends.

That said, the dollar is not irrelevant. A sustained decline can feed back into inflation through higher import prices and commodities, which helps explain the Federal Reserve’s continued caution. Recent Fed messaging has reinforced that while inflation risks have diminished, they have not disappeared. In that sense, currency stability may increasingly act as a constraint on how quickly or how far policymakers are willing to ease, particularly if inflation pressures re-emerge at the margins.

Those pressures are part of the backdrop facing consumers, whose confidence has softened in recent months. Sentiment surveys reflect ongoing affordability challenges tied to prices, interest rates, and housing costs. Yet the broader pattern that has defined this cycle remains intact: how consumers feel and how they behave continue to diverge. Despite lower confidence readings, labor market conditions remain firm and spending has held up better than sentiment alone would suggest. This disconnect has persisted for several years and remains a key reason the economy has continued to grow despite widespread caution.

Corporate earnings add another layer to this picture. As fourth-quarter results come in, the pace of upside surprises has slowed from near-record levels, which is more indicative of normalization than deterioration. After a period when estimates were unusually easy to beat, expectations are becoming more demanding. Encouragingly, earnings strength is no longer confined to the largest technology companies. Mid-cap and small-cap firms are showing improving beat rates, while profit margins remain elevated even as top-line growth moderates. This broadening beneath the surface is an important ingredient if earnings growth is to prove durable rather than narrowly concentrated.

Inflation data reinforce the need for balance. The latest Producer Price Index was firmer than expected on a month-over-month basis, a reminder that inflation pressures still exist within the supply chain even as consumer inflation has eased. Producer prices tend to lead consumer prices with a lag, which helps explain why policymakers remain cautious. The takeaway is not that inflation is re-accelerating, but that progress back toward price stability is unlikely to be linear.

Trade data and the deficit provide useful context, but little cause for alarm. While the trade deficit widened in the most recent month, the longer-term trend still shows gradual narrowing on a twelve-month basis. From a growth perspective, trade remains a modest contributor rather than a dominant driver. From an investment standpoint, shifts in the dollar and global capital flows are far more consequential than the absolute level of the deficit itself.

Taken together, the indicators point to an economy that is slowing in an orderly way, not slipping into recession. Dollar weakness reflects global dynamics more than domestic fragility. Consumers are cautious but employed. Earnings growth is broadening, even as expectations rise. Inflation is easing, though not fully extinguished. In this environment, disciplined diversification is more important than making aggressive macro bets in either direction.

Let’s think of discipline and order this week not as restrictive burdens, but as tools on the path to freedom.

Tim

But why? “Not because they lack the capacity for joy, but because their reward system has been trained to overlook it.”

How is that possible?

As winter weather bears down on the better part of the U.S. this weekend, I hope your family stays warm, dry, and safe—and you enjoy a little extra reading time. Thanks for including us in that!

This week, I’ll examine how overachievement has an ironic downside, and how to stay on the upside, while Tony addresses the impact of geopolitical headlines and U.S. dollar weakness on the markets.

Tim

Tim Maurer, CFP®, RLP®

Chief Advisory Officer

SIGNATUREFD

In this Net Worthwhile® Weekly you'll find:

• Financial LIFE Planning:

  • Are You A Financial Overachiever?

• Quote O' The Week:

  • Henry David Thoreau

• Weekly Market Update:

  • Global Capital Still Favors the U.S.

Financial LIFE Planning

Are You A Financial Overachiever?

So, why is it that high achievers often find it difficult to enjoy life’s simple pleasures?

Let’s call it the satisfaction trap.

The Satisfaction Trap

“High achievers tend to be very good at satisfaction,” which Dr. Brooks describes as “the joy that comes from achievement after struggle.”

High achievers, it seems, can lose focus on the meaning and purpose that underlie a goal, as they become more driven by the accomplishment of the goal itself.

This exploration really comes to light when we think about it from the financial perspective. For example, there are many who are gifted accumulators of money, but who struggle to spend it in a way that truly enriches their lives.

Presumably, when they started accumulating, there was a purpose behind it. To save up to purchase their first car, a down payment on their first home, to fund a college education for their children, and eventually to replace their income when they’re no longer able to work.

But that number. The net worth number and the account value numbers. At some point, they become the thing, rather than the purpose that inspired the original effort.

And to Brooks’ point, the same thing happens with our careers—when it becomes more about the title than the work that inspired us in the first place. Or that business—when it becomes more about the valuation or the exit than the original mission that impelled the enterprise to its success.

The GPGL Imbalance

You’ve heard me say before that our wealth is more than just our money—it’s also our time, influence, energy, and relationships. And you’ve also heard me say that there are only four ways that we can use our wealth. We use it to Live today, to Grow for tomorrow, to Protect against that which puts our people and property at risk, and to Give to the people and causes that matter to us.

But which “bucket” gets the most attention in wealth management, and which gets the least, IMHO?

• I’d argue that Grow gets the gold (the Olympics start in 2 weeks!). The private and public markets have been sliced and diced and leveraged and optioned and shorted and packaged and repackaged, and no doubt will continue to be, as this area seems to be where the financial services industry tends to make the most money.

• Protect takes the silver, and again, we likely shouldn’t be surprised, as protection—especially through insurance and insurance-based products—is another big money maker.

• Give takes the bronze, but for a reason you likely don’t think. Sure, the non-profit space is a pretty big player, but for most of us, it is our compulsory giving through taxation that represents the majority of our giving. It’s why my friend and colleague, Doug Liptak, insists that many investors over-optimize the minutia of their portfolio in an effort to squeak out more basis points, while a substantial percentage of our wealth is consumed by taxation. Give is also the home to our education and estate planning, two major pillars of any parent’s planning.

• Notably off the podium, therefore, is the Live bucket—the bucket that I would argue all the others are in service of!

Please don’t misread me; I’m not suggesting that the financial services industry is conspiratorial for dedicating its efforts in the most profitable pillars of our wealth management. In fact, we all benefit from an ever-evolving slate of products that help us better Grow and Protect our assets.

But these products, by Arthur Brooks’ logic, are also those that are most inclined to generate momentary (and occasionally addictive) satisfaction rather than lasting joy. They’re more transactional, countable, and especially in the Grow domain, they may do as much for our ego as they do our balance sheet.

Therefore, I hope you—and your financial advisor—are spending the invaluable time to focus on the lesser attended buckets, because these are the buckets that literally fund our lives and our legacies.

The Way Out

It’s easy to get into the satisfaction box. Especially when you’re good at meeting or exceeding goals at work, you’ll likely be rewarded for hitting the number, regardless of the purpose that underlies it. It’s easy to accept applause for successful exits and the numerical headline splashes that seem to attribute virtue to mere valuation. And it’s easy to marinate in the false safety of net worth statements that, aside from their intentional activation, are worth little more than the paper on which they are printed.

You see: There’s nothing inherently good about achievement for achievement’s sake or riches for riches’ sake.

We don’t celebrate the top-selling drug dealers or give Pulitzer Prizes to those who write trashy novels, no matter how many copies they sell.

It is the life-giving purpose beneath a goal that gives it value; it is the mission that drives a business that gives it meaning; and it is what we do with our money that gives it worth.

Indeed, we all find ourselves inside the hedonic hamster wheel at various times in our lives and work; and the good news is that there’s a way out. We simply need to refocus our lens, allowing us to pan out in search of perspective.

For example, I believe the best companies ensure that their mission becomes a mantra, oft spoken and always exemplified, especially by its leadership.

The highest achievers regularly revisit the motivation that fuels their success and refine their goals when necessary to ensure they are vehicles, not destinations.

And I believe the truly wealthy can plot a direct line from their assets to their aspirations and can always articulate the purpose beneath their planning.

So what’s your money actually for?

Quote O' The Week

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was an American essayist, poet, and philosopher best known for Walden, his reflection on simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Civil Disobedience, which influenced figures from Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr.

A lesser-known fact about Thoreau is that he was an accomplished land surveyor and is credited with inventing a technique for measuring tree heights that became standard practice. His surveying work was highly sought after in Concord, Massachusetts, and he took meticulous field notes that modern ecologists still use to track environmental changes over the past 150+ years. The philosophical wanderer was also a precise scientist and skilled technician.

Weekly Market Update

The S&P was down slightly, but the remaining equity indices were up:

• - 0.35% .SPX (500 U.S. large companies)

• - 0.23% IWD (U.S. large value companies)

• - 0.36% IWM (U.S. small companies)

• + 0.13% IWN (U.S. small value companies)

• + 0.48% EFV (International value companies)

• + 1.50% SCZ (International small companies)

• + 0.00% VGIT (U.S. intermediate-term Treasury bonds

Global Capital Still Favors The U.S.

Contributed by Tony Welch, CFA®, CFP®, CMT, Chief Investment Officer, SignatureFD

Recent dollar weakness and geopolitical headlines have prompted questions about whether something more structural is at play for the U.S. dollar. One useful way to pressure-test that concern is to look at where global capital is actually flowing. Over the past 12 months, foreign investors purchased roughly $1.6 trillion of U.S. stocks and bonds, the highest level on record.

While currencies can move up and down over shorter periods, sustained capital inflows suggest continued confidence in U.S. financial markets. Relative interest rates, market depth, and ongoing leadership in technology and innovation have kept the U.S. an attractive destination for global investors. Taken together, the data suggests that a sharp or disorderly decline in the U.S. dollar is not likely, even if periodic weakness persists.

Chart O’ The Week

Work with Tim and Tony

The Message from Our Indicators

The economy is still growing, but the margin for error may be narrowing. Recent data suggest the U.S. economy continues to expand, with consumer spending holding up and inflation no longer accelerating. That’s the good news. The more nuanced part is the labor market. Hiring and wage pressures are cooling, which helps ease inflation, but it also introduces risk if job growth weakens too much. For now, conditions point to moderation rather than contraction. Still, we believe the labor market remains a key area to watch, as it will heavily influence both consumer confidence and the Fed’s next moves.

From a fundamental perspective, companies have broadly shown impressive resilience. Despite higher tariffs and cost pressures, profit margins have remained near record levels, supported by productivity gains and cost controls across many sectors, not just large technology companies. At the same time, today’s stock prices reflect fairly optimistic assumptions about future earnings. That means the market may be less forgiving if growth slows or profits fall short. Strong fundamentals are a positive backdrop, but expectations are high, and that raises the importance for earnings to match expectations.

Market trends are improving beneath the surface. We’re seeing early signs of broader market participation, with leadership expanding beyond a narrow group of large-cap stocks into areas like value, smaller companies, and international markets. This often happens when investors gain confidence in continued growth. Still, broader leadership is not guaranteed to last. For these areas to sustain momentum, earnings growth will need to follow. In that sense, the recent rotation is encouraging, but it remains a developing trend rather than a confirmed shift. All told, we continue to give the bull market the benefit of the doubt but remain aware that midterm election years have been challenging, especially in the middle third of the year.

Middle third? And I just got adjusted to quarterly planning! I hope three-thirds of your weekend are amazing.

Tim

It’s about Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1964 Nobel Peace Prize and what happened when my adopted hometown of Atlanta tried to honor him with an integrated dinner. When invitations went out to the city’s white business elite, the response was, well, underwhelming. So Mayor Ivan Allen turned to Coca-Cola CEO J. Paul Austin for help.

Austin, who had witnessed apartheid’s devastation in South Africa, gathered Atlanta’s business leaders and told them plainly: “It is embarrassing for Coca-Cola to be located in a city that refuses to honor its Nobel Prize winner. We are an international business. The Coca-Cola Company does not need Atlanta. You all need to decide whether Atlanta needs the Coca-Cola Company.”

Apparently, within two hours, every ticket was sold.

The story raises questions that still matter: What does it mean to truly serve a community? And how do we measure what’s worthwhile when profit and principle collide?

Thanks for joining us this weekend, and I hope you’ll also pause to consider why it is, indeed, longer than usual!

Tim

Tim Maurer, CFP®, RLP®

Chief Advisory Officer

SIGNATUREFD

In this Net Worthwhile® Weekly you'll find:

• Financial LIFE Planning:

  • How To Know When To Spend A Lot Of Money

• NWWW Podcast (New!)

  • Market Forecast For 2026

• Quote O' The Week:

  • Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

• Weekly Market Update:

  • Mixed, But Mostly Up

Financial LIFE Planning

How To Know When To Spend A Lot Of Money

We used to wear suits.

It wasn’t an unspoken rule. It was the rule. If you worked in finance, you wore a suit. It took several years, early in my career, but eventually I had a closet full of them. Now, they all reside with bargain hunters at a few different Goodwill locations.

But even if I kept this wardrobe war chest, it would still be nearly worthless—because they’d all be out of style. Pronounced shoulder pads in the jackets, baggy pants with a serious break at the ankles.

Imagine if I’d had the money back then to buy really nice suits. All I’d have to show for it is slightly higher itemized receipts from Goodwill.

Now, I’m definitely not telling you how to dress. That’s not the point. The point is to address how we spend our money and how to get the most utility—the economist’s vernacular for joy, interestingly—from our expenditures.

Here are three ways to know when to spend a lot of money:

Dr. Meir Statman at Santa Clara University has done so much to help us understand the value—and lack thereof—of our money expenditures. He suggests that there are three primary benefits to be derived from spending our cash: utilitarian, emotional, and expressive. Let’s address each in human terms:

The Obsolescence Test (Utilitarian)

Sure, there are still good reasons to buy a suit, and maybe even to “invest” some decent money in one. But is it possible that by the time any suit starts to show signs of fading that it is likely going to be out of style? I’d wager that’s entirely possible.

So, what are those purchases that are more likely to pass the obsolescence test?

• Things that don’t depend on trends or fashion: A classic watch versus a trendy one. Quality cookware versus kitchen gadgetry.

• Things that improve with age or use: Musical instruments or staple leather shoes or boots. Maybe a classic car or a particular tool.

• Infrastructure vs. decoration: Custom bookshelves versus a lampshade.

• Books: This one might be a personal preference, but there are books that I paid $20 for that have given me hundreds or thousands of dollars in value—some that have changed my life in ways that are incalculable—so I’ve never hesitated to spend money on a book. Plus, you need something to fill those custom bookshelves, right?

Unlike the examples to come, the obsolescence test is more objective or actuarial. The big question is, “Will this thing still be useful and/or valuable in 5 to 10 years—or will it become obsolete?”

The Joy Projection (Emotional)

But what about the emotional benefits of certain expenditures—the ROE, Return on Experience? You’ve likely heard that money spent on experiences is thought to bring us more joy per dollar than that which is spent on stuff, at a rate of at least 2-to-1. But there are certainly also tangible items that facilitate experiences, right? And what about experiences or stuff that we buy for other people? Let’s look at each:

• Experiences often compound in value: The bucket list trip you planned for a year and documented through artful pictures and journaling hits on at least three different levels: the planning and anticipation, the experience itself, and the memories that just seem to build over time. And it need not even be an Instagram-worthy occasion, as we can build all three components of memory maximization through experiences that don’t cost a lot either. In fact, the creativity required to craft an experience on a budget can be yet another factor that adds to the overall joy derived.

• Experience-enhancing stuff: A good friend of mine has a meaty four-wheel drive pickup truck, but he’s not just posturing. He’s a bona fide adventurer, so that truck is packed with a generator-powered fridge, a pop-up tent, and sufficient gear to take a whole crew off the grid. It’s an unforgettable experience on four wheels for up to five people.

• The gift of anything above: And let’s not forget that the giving of experiences or experience-enhancing stuff is one of the greater sources of joy. My brother-in-law was a professional DJ (who literally toured with Method Man) and bought his daughter a beginner rig when she expressed interest in learning the craft.

The Identity Question (Expressive)

Is this purchase expressing who you are or building who you hope to become? There’s nothing wrong with buying something because it sends a message about what’s important to you, but there is a nuanced difference between being genuinely expressive and simply projecting an identity that is more of a facade. Here are three (difficult) questions that can help us know the difference:

• Are you buying the identity or living it?

• Whose approval are you purchasing?

• Does this align with who you are, or who you are becoming?

I can surf, but I’m not a surfer. I can snowboard, but I’m not a snowboarder. I love hiking, but I’m not a climber. And the only golf I should be playing is on a putt-putt course or the Angry Birds module at Top Golf.

Therefore, it would be silly for me to buy a top-of-the line surfboard, snowboard, or driver. In fact, those performance level instruments would likely lead to a more challenging and less enjoyable experience for me—so why would I spend extra money on them, if not to project an identity that isn’t mine?

There’s a twist.

Nobody can tell you what makes sense for you.

I know people who still wear suits, maybe expensive ones, too. At least one of them does so because it makes him feel more serious about his important work. It’s more like a uniform than a suit; when he puts it on, he feels like he does better work. And dang, he does amazing work—and he always looks sharp doing it.

Indeed, nobody can tell you what is right or wrong to spend money on. (This is something that the financial industry has gotten really, really wrong, by the way—as the collective regularly condescends to those they serve, simply because their values or preferences may differ.)

But I bet you know. Especially if you take a moment (or better yet, a month) before making a substantive purchase, you likely know whether there’s commensurate utility to be gained from that expenditure, or if the emotional value of the purchase is proportionate to the price, or if the expression is one that is genuine to who you are rather than who someone else might want you to be.

The hard part isn’t knowing; it’s being honest with ourselves and acting accordingly.

NWWW Podcast (New!)

2026 Market Outlook: Beyond The Forecast

From lessons learned in 2025 to a forecast—or “forecast,” really—for 2026, Tony and I break it down, including the following:

• What’s a “K-shaped economy” anyway, and will it continue in 2026?

• AI: The transition from enablers to users

• Evergreen investment principles in any year

Work with Tim and Tony

Quote O' The Week

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) was a Baptist minister and the most prominent leader of the American civil rights movement. Drawing on his deep Christian faith and the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, King led transformative campaigns against segregation and racial injustice, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the March on Washington, where he delivered his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 at age 35, making him the youngest recipient at the time. King's vision extended beyond civil rights to encompass economic justice and opposition to what he called the "giant triplets" of racism, materialism, and militarism. He was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968, while supporting striking sanitation workers. We honor his legacy on the third Monday of January each year.

"We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'person-oriented' society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

Weekly Market Update

The S&P was down slightly, but the remaining equity indices were up:

• - 0.38% .SPX (500 U.S. large companies)

• + 0.64% IWD (U.S. large value companies)

• + 2.13% IWM (U.S. small companies)

• + 2.22% IWN (U.S. small value companies)

• + 1.34% EFV (International value companies)

• + 0.69% SCZ (International small companies)

• - 0.25% VGIT (U.S. intermediate-term Treasury bonds

Have a great rest of your long weekend!

Tim

Key Topics Discussed:

2025 Year in Review

• Third consecutive year of double-digit gains for U.S. large-cap stocks

• International stocks delivered best outperformance since 1993

• Diversified portfolios rewarded across asset classes (small caps, commodities, bonds)

• The April “Liberation Day” tariff shock nearly triggered a bear market

• Crypto underperformed despite favorable policy environment—a lesson in “pricing in” anticipated news

The K-Shaped Economy

• Diverging economic fortunes since the pandemic

• Higher-income households benefiting from elevated interest rates and asset appreciation

• Lower-income households squeezed by inflation on necessities and stagnant wage growth

• Credit card delinquencies at highest levels since 2011

• Consumer sentiment remains near recessionary lows despite strong labor market

AI: From Enablers to Users

• The “Magnificent Seven” and AI infrastructure companies dominated 2022-2025

• Valuations for AI enablers now elevated—market may be looking ahead

• 2026 theme: Shift to rewarding AI adopters and users

• Profit margins improving across sectors, potentially driven by AI adoption

• Personal productivity lesson: Deep expertise in select tools beats novelty-chasing

• Low switching costs for AI-as-search could challenge future profitability assumptions

Timeless Investment Principles

• Nobody knows the future—earning above risk-free rates requires embracing uncertainty

• Portfolio resilience trumps prediction

• Align investments with specific time horizons (short-term vs. long-term goals)

• The foundation: Have an actual plan, not just a collection of investments

Quotable Moments:

• “We forecast for fun—nobody knows what’s in advance, but we do have major themes we can talk about.”

• “By the time you get the good news, a lot has already been priced in.”

• “The tools I use get to know me better through time—there’s institutional knowledge built in.”

• “The reason we earn more than the risk-free rate is because we take on the risk of an uncertain future.”

• “The only way you can stick with the plan is if you have one.”