Happy New Year!

We officially closed out the 2022 calendar year last week and we’re ready for a new start in 2023! We want to say thank you for giving us the opportunity to serve you in 2022. You trusted us through a difficult year and we understand the importance of providing consistent, reliable, trustworthy advice during a troubling year in the market.

As a team in 2022, it was a year of difficult transformation and growth. Eric had many health challenges, but he is feeling much better now! We hired two additional team members full-time- Jake Kehoe and Jordan Liddle. Jake is a fully licensed financial advisor helping us with ongoing client meetings, investment models, and retirement goal plans. Jordan will be assisting Carol with operational duties and client service-related items behind the scenes. After our transition to Raymond James in 2021, we continued implementing new processes throughout 2022 to better serve you, and we embarked on a new personalized money management process to better control the funds and holdings in our investment models. Some of you will learn more about this in 2023 as we meet with you throughout the year. You also helped us start working with 30 new families in 2022, which is incredible! Thank you very much for your trust.

From a market perspective, the year was full of disappointment across many asset classes. Below is a list of where certain important market indicators finished the year, courtesy of FactSet. • The S&P500 Index finished at -19.44%, while the Nasdaq and Dow Jones finished at -33.10% & -8.78% respectively • The 10-year US Treasury yield moved from 1.51% to 4.23% in late October, before falling slightly by year-end • The US Dollar had its best year since 2015, finishing at +7.9%; gold lost 0.1% and WTI Crude Oil ended the year at +6.71% Despite all these facts and figures, the federal reserve tells us that retirements among Americans were up 1.5% since the pandemic in 2020. No matter the market conditions, many still need help and guidance transitioning to their next chapter of life. Looking ahead to 2023, we thought it would be helpful to include a link to the Raymond James CIO Monthly Snapshot. Larry Adam provides his thoughts and predictions about what will occur in 2023.

2023 Outlook

In addition to those market updates, please see some very important retirement savings updates for 2023 in the attached PDF. Many of you will now be able to save more money in your retirement plans, IRAs, and health savings accounts. This is great news and we’d encourage you to revisit your contributions and plans as we head into 2023. If you’d like our advice, please reach out and we’d be happy to help.

We are hopeful for 2023 and we are excited to continue serving you and your families. Thank you again and we wish you a fantastic start to 2023!

The foregoing information has been obtained from sources considered to be reliable, but we do not guarantee that it is accurate or complete, it is not a statement of all available data necessary for making an investment decision, and it does not constitute a recommendation. Any opinions are those of the author and not necessarily those of Raymond James.