Here you’ll find DFA's Q4, 2019 Market Summary. Page 4 will show stock and bond market returns for major indices around the globe. You’ll see all green arrows for 1, 5, and 10-year returns. While we typically expect returns to be positive over 5 and especially 10 year returns and beyond, the very healthy positive returns we saw in 2019 should not be assumed to continue nor should be expected to be this robust year over year. 
 
We can enjoy these strong returns and use opportunities to rebalance money from the outstanding market performers into the still positive but less performing areas of the stock market, and / or we could look to take some money off the table, if your portfolio objective allows for it. Ultimately, it is important to stay grounded and to not get too high with the highs, nor too low with the lows.
 
The final two pages tie in nicely into the idea of staying grounded and not getting too high (or low) in response to your portfolio’s performance. According to a recent survey by DFA, sense of security / peace of mind was the most popular answer when respondents were asked “How do you primarily measure the value received from your advisor?” Our job is to talk you off the ledge when returns are down…knowing those down days are temporary, and to keep you grounded when markets seem to be making new highs almost every day - knowing those days can be fickle, too and knowing today’s bull market can turn into tomorrow’s bear market.

Here you'll find DFA's Q3, 2019 Market Summary Report.
 
Everybody has or knows someone who has a great market timing story.  Their story might be a little exaggerated or embellished, but it’s probably mostly true…of course, you typically only hear the good stories and not the bad ones.  Market timing is tough, very tough.  It requires picking the right time to get into a stock and the right time to get out of a stock – it’s doubly hard to get it right both times. 
 
For every share of a stock bought, there is a share sold. Typically, this buying and selling is done at an exchange.  The combined effect of all this buying and selling is that all available information is quickly incorporated into a stock’s price.  So, trying to time the market based on an article you read, a TV show you watched, a chart you analyzed, or what your neighbor said is likely to send you chasing after old news.  If only we could stay ahead of old news.
 
But what about professional stock pickers?  They’re professionals, so they must know more than us, or be correct more often, right?  Unfortunately, that’s not the case.  Check out the linked article to learn why.

Stock markets are comprised of a collection of stocks. Good stocks, bad stocks, and all stocks in between can be found in a particular stock market. There are multiple stock markets across the world, and while we can’t directly invest in those markets, we can invest in products that closely track those markets. As I wrote above, all types of stocks are found in a stock market, so what happens to returns when we pull out a specific group of stocks?
 
It is common for a subset of stocks to drive a sizeable portion of an overall market’s return. Here you will find a DFA study that shows removing the top 10% of performers each year from 1994 to 2018 reduced global market performance from 7.2% to 2.9%! And further excluding the best 25% turns a positive return into a relatively large negative return!
 
If only we could predict which performers would be the best – and the worst – we could ramp up our returns…but we can’t.  And oftentimes past best performers don’t continue their strong performance into future years. Therefore, we must own a diversified portfolio. We don’t know which stocks will be the best, or the worst, or somewhere in between, but if we hold all of them, we’ll get the best, the worst, and the middle, and be left with a pretty decent return on our investment. If we pick and choose, and get it wrong, we’ll be left with paltry returns, or even no returns and actually a loss of our money…something we can’t have happen when we look to build our nest egg for retirement.
 
When we own everything, we’ll do well over any length of time.

Here you will find the Q2, 2019 Market Summary Report. Typically, I draw your attention to an informative or thought-provoking (in my opinion, at least😊) write up that concludes the quarterly report, but this time is different. On page 4 (pasted below, as well), you will find the Long-Term Market Summary for major index returns over the last 1, 5, and 10 years. I think it’s a very powerful graphic showing the importance of owning a diversified portfolio covering all these markets – you’ll see big green arrows all across the board! We know short-term time frames of especially 1 year, and even 5 years can exhibit very wild and unpredictable returns, but 10 year returns start to show pretty reliable numbers – typically you will find two things: 1) positive returns; and 2) stocks offering better returns than bonds. We know owing stocks (for growth) and bonds (for protection and income) for the long-term are a great wealth building and wealth preserving tool and graphics like these reinforce that belief.

Everybody has or knows someone who has a great market timing story. Their story might be a little exaggerated or embellished, but it’s probably mostly true…of course, you typically only hear the good stories and not the bad ones.  Market timing is tough, very tough. It requires picking the right time to get into a stock and the right time to get out of a stock – it’s doubly hard to get it right both times. 
 
For every share of a stock bought, there is a share sold. Typically, this buying and selling is done at an exchange. The combined effect of all this buying and selling is that all available information is quickly incorporated into a stock’s price. So, trying to time the market based on an article you read, a TV show you watched, a chart you analyzed, or what your neighbor said is likely to send you chasing after old news. If only we could stay ahead of old news.
 
But what about professional stock pickers? They’re professionals, so they must know more than us, or be correct more often, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Check out the this article from DFA to learn why.