NEWS a life well planned is a life well lived
The Captain’s Log Spring 2019
Welcome to the spring of 2019. This year, along the east coast of Virginia, we have had the great fortune of enjoying a mild, warm and unseasonably wet winter season. Now, as March has arrived, we are all cheering for the inevitable arrival of warmth and summer. The change of the season has become palatable. With the arrival of spring 2019, it is appropriate to remember that exactly 10 years ago, during March of 2009, the stock market bottomed and the U.S. economy somehow veered out of what appeared at the time to be the inevitable death spiral brought on by the collapse of the housing market. Exactly 10 years prior to that, during the late 1990’s, we were collectively enjoying the bountiful irrational exuberances of the tech bubble. Remember those years? The beckoning of an avant-garde era with a promised new economic model coupled with the bountiful and limitless prosperity of “clicks
and ships”. Alas! Here we are today, the spring of 2019, 20 short years removed from the tech bubble and 10 hardly discernable years removed from the housing market bubble. One decade removed from the 2009 stock market crash, we continue to enjoy the benefits of one of the longest bull market runs in American history. As we look through 2019 and beyond, are we presently overpriced, underpriced, or should we even care? As informed and proactive investors should we with confidence be “risk-on” with our investment assets or is now the time to protect our pennies, head to the barn, and begin looking towards hedging away our exposure and opportunity. (continued on next page)