Good morning, happy Monday, and happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!
“Faith can give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr
Today is an interesting congruence of events: past, present, and future.
Today we honor Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday was 95 years ago (January 15, 1929). Today we look back on this life and legacy.
Today will also bring us the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States of America. This will obviously dominate the headlines for the present. Love him or hate him, I can’t imagine it will be a boring day. 😉
Today also is the first day of the rest of our lives … we are walking into an unknown, uncertain future.
This future can be scary. We as human beings crave certainty, but there is way less of that than we desire.
How will the next 4 years with President Trump go?
How will the stock market do in 2025?
What will happen in Ukraine and Israel?
I could go on and on with questions we can ask ourselves that will give us anxiety and cause us sleepless nights.
Or …
We can enter the future with faith, as MLK, Jr’s quote says that opened this memo.
When I Googled the definition of faith I got “complete trust or confidence in someone or something.”
I am a person who seeks to live by full and complete faith in God and his promises. I am far from perfect on this, but my faith is the core of my being.
But, regardless of where you are on a faith journey with God, we all have faith, and we live it our every day.
We have faith that the bridge we drive on won’t collapse.
We have faith that the airline pilots will safely land the plane at the destination we purchased our tickets for.
Heck, we even have enough faith in our fellow citizens that we get on the road with them, any one of them could swerve their steering wheel and end our life virtually instantly. There’s a lot of bad drivers out there, but we still drive without generally much thought of the risk associated.
Please allow me to ask a real question: what journeys in life are worth taking that have complete and total certainty?
It’s not marriage.
It’s not having children.
It’s not graduating, changing careers, or moving.
Here’s the fact as best as I’ve been able to determine in my 45 years on this earth: the most valuable things in life involve risk.
Marriage is risky. Raising children is risky. Changing careers is risky. Moving is risky. On and on I could go. Any of these things COULD turn out not ideal. In fact, almost none of these things turn out as perfectly as we might have envisioned.
But would we rather miss out on the joys in life that involve risk?
How could it be any different when it comes to investing?
“I don’t trust the stock market.” I’ve heard this statement more times than I can count in my 26+ year career in finances.
Do stocks go up and down? For sure.
Are there periods of time when it’s difficult to be an investor? Yes.
Can we let fears paralyze us from the incredible profit available to investors? I sure as heck hope not and have dedicated my career to helping amazing people avoid doing that.
Here’s the thing, when we actually quantify our fears, oftentimes things are not as bad as we make them out to be in our minds.
Do we really believe that the stock market will go to zero?
Do we think the entire global economy will instantly grind to a stop?
Will every company in business suddenly cease to exist and we as investors lose everything overnight?
Sure, there will be challenges we face as investors. We will have to keep our heads on straight, tune out the noise, and manage our emotions if we want to benefit as investors. But I wholeheartedly believe the benefits far outweigh the risks.
One of my favorite bands is Switchfoot, and in their song “Wonderful Feeling” a portion of the lyrics say:
Ain’t it funny how the fears we had last night
Don’t look so scary in the morning light?
I hope this memo respectfully challenged us to view risk in the appropriate “morning light.”
It’s such an incredible honor and joy to partner with you. Please let us know if there is any way we can support you along your journey.
Make it a great week ahead.