On what was a crazy Friday after a crazy weekend prior, it feels like world events are constantly happening more and more.  In my experience, there’s about a 75% chance when you tune in to a major news channel that the bottom graphic will have “BREAKING NEWS” on it.  While I feel a potential assassination and an IT meltdown grounding flights and shutting down banking functions would certainly qualify, I think the feeling of living through constant world events is just a product of living in the Information Era. When you have access to information as soon as it becomes information, t ..read more

You know what I haven’t heard about in a while?  Crypto.  When people hear you work in finance, you can get a pretty good gauge about where their mind is on the topic based on their own curiosities in your conversations with them.  And for a long time, it seemed the most prevailing aspect of what we do was to try and pick out which coins were going to make them rich and which were scams.  It was a funny time as we were so obviously new to this craze that the answers they were seeking weren’t quite available yet, but their minds were absorbed in trying to take advantage.&nb ..read more

As a parent of 6 and grandfather to soon to be 4 grandchildren, I've used the phrase, "be careful what you wish for" more times than I can remember. As somebody who has been following the investment markets for over 30 years, I have used that phrase during a few economic and market cycles. It is most often mentioned at times like this — we've been on a nice run, the economy was chugging along nicely and handled Fed rate hikes, earnings growth expectations are well above the long-term average, but the market participants believe in order to keep going, the Fed needs to reverse course and start ..read more

The Mega Cap Growth Market If you’re an investor in an S&P 500 or related index fund, you’ve had a pretty good 18 months. Ignoring a couple of quick, scary drops, you’ve had a pretty good 15 years. The largest companies have become behemoths who dwarf the rest of the market. While the returns have been spectacular, market history, economic fundamentals, and simple logic tells us this is not healthy for the long-term. The graphic to the right illustrates how big Nvidia has become relative to other mega-cap US companies. History will tell us whether or not this made sense, but looking back ..read more

The subtitle for this week's blog could be "dumbfounded". I try my hardest to stay out of politics and especially about giving opinions, but after Thursday night's debate I'm trying to find the positive in the debacle we witnessed. Unfortunately, the outcome of the election will play a role in our investments, our economy, and our future so we do need to talk about it at times. I've said since 2010 that our two-party system was broken and we needed to see either a powerful third party rise up or a massive change in leadership on both sides. Thus far, the only thing Republicans and Democrats h ..read more

Did you miss our webinar today? Every election year, there is much angst about the outcome and what it will mean for the economy and your investment portfolio – which is why we wanted to host a webinar several months before the election! This webinar focused on what the DATA says about the true key drivers of the economy, what the current economic environment is saying about those drivers, and what historically happens following the election. Along the way, key behavioral finance topics were covered to better understand what is likely to be a year filled with uncertainty. Since this was a lon ..read more

For the first part of 2024, we took you through a series called BRI Objections. We spent some time explaining how we respond to the reoccurring objections we receive about Biblically Responsible Investing. If you missed that series, you can find all the posts here: BRI Objections - SEM Trader’s Blog SEM Trader's BlogCourtney Dent For the remainder of the year, we're going to shift to discussing the birth of the biblically responsible investment movement. Before we jump into the beginnings of BRI, we're needing to look at some basic issues we see in the world today. In today's world, we of ..read more

Our human brains are designed to recall the most recent data faster (as well as deep, meaningful experiences that spiked our emotions up or down). This shapes the way we make decisions, meaning unless we purposely push ourselves to think past the short-term, most of our decisions are slanted based on the current environment. This plays a role in all aspects of our life, but especially when it comes to investing. Last week we asked whether the current AI mania was a bubble or an opportunity. We looked at how just a handful of companies are driving the returns of the popular S&P 500 index f ..read more

The financial media likes to throw around a lot of Wall Street jargon as it makes it easier to tell the story of what they see happening in the markets. We've talked many times about the way they use a 20% threshold to determine whether or not we are in a bear or a bull market. While I take issue with that because the experience of a 20% drop or rally varies greatly based on the underlying economic environment, at least it is an easy way to define it. What is not so easy is identifying a "bubble" in the market. This term is used because we've had two relatively recent bubbles which caused the ..read more

Faithful obedience doesn't just impact us, it impacts others around us. Have you ever been impacted by someone else's obedience? In this month's Cornerstone blog, we're going to see how Daniel's obedience to God impacted those around him, including the new king. Babylon finally had a ruler who knew the power of God – King Darius. When he got into power, he reorganized the political system into provinces with a plan to make Daniel the prime minister over all of them. When other officials heard about Daniel's power, they became jealous and wanted to find a way to impeach or charge him. However ..read more