Hello, Last night was the spookiest time of the year! We stayed in last night on Halloween and opted to go to a trunk or treat experience at Amelia’s school on Friday and a fall festival event on Sunday afternoon. Amelia and Ansley were Bingo and Bluey.

Some may say our house has its own creepy element year round. I bet you didn’t know your financial planner owns a graveyard too. It’s no joke, we own a graveyard. When we were shopping for our house, it was a highly competitive market and we became exhausted with the search. When we found our house, we put in the offer at full asking price. We were ready to be done. The realtor came back the next day and said they needed to disclose that a graveyard butted against the property line. Come to find out we would never be able to put a backyard fence in our yard because of the way the cemetery was placed on the lot.

I told the realtor that we would buy the lot beside ours so we’d own the graveyard or we didn’t want the house at all. They came back and gave us the graveyard land plus another quarter acre. Mallory said she’d go along with it if I did not talk about it being there. Nobody knows anything about who rests there or the history of the cemetery. Small river rock marker seems to indicate that it’s probably a couple hundred years old. As the earth has moved, the positions of the markers are staggered. It’ll remain our spooky mystery…

We’ve got an issue in the markets these days. It’s coming to light that the stock market is indicating something we all knew to be true. The market does not like uncertainty because it’s forward looking. It tries to price in changes before they transpire, and with interest rates being in flux it causes market uncertainty. Truist bank co-chief investment officer Keith Lerner said recently, “For equities to have a sustainable rally, interest rates likely need to stabilize. And while calling a top in yields, which have had so much upward momentum, has been a fool’s errand to say the least, our best estimate is that buyers for the 10-year US Treasury yield will step in more aggressively as we approach the 2006/2007 highs near 5.25%.” We are getting close to that now, and perhaps we’ll learn more today after the Federal Reserve ends its meeting about where interest rates are likely to go.

In 2018 the government raised interest rates and the market went down about six percent. During that time period Warren Buffett, the famous billionaire who’s made all of his fortune in the stock market, was interviewed. He said, “Some people should not own stocks at all because they just get too upset with price fluctuations.” He went on to explain that we should treat our investments as long-term business partnerships. He thought with that mind frame people would be able to better weather economic storms. It’s easy to lose sight of our long-term objectives when things feel dicey, but I’d encourage you to review your financial plan and what your objectives are to determine if an allocation change needs to happen. If your objectives have changed, that’s a better catalyst for change than market fluctuations. If you’d like to review your objectives together, I’d be happy to schedule a time. Just call 864.641.7955 or reply here. Until next week, David C. Treece, Financial Planner

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