Watch this post as a video. A strong January provided enough energy to ultimately overcome March’s negative bank headlines to give us a much-needed positive quarter to start the year. Some of those dour bank headlines were: FDIC’s takeovers of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank; UBS agreeing to buy Credit Suisse for more than $3 billion dollars; and a handful of regional banks following in the path of SVB and Signature by shuttering their doors, as well. Worrisome headlines for sure, but when headlines worry you, bank on your investment principles. And that leads into the DFA article on page 15 of the Q1, 2023 Quarterly Report. I highlighted a couple key sentences / bullet points. There will always be market uncertainty in the short-term; those uncertainties, or new news, or market events that we don’t know yet how to react to drive the market’s daily ups and downs. But the long-term direction of the market is up, it’s proven that to us over a century now. So take comfort in that market certainty that its only long-term movement is up. Hope is not a strategy, and repeated market timing is hope. It’s hoping that you’re getting correct the short-term market movements. Rather, if you stay invested every single day, you’ll get the bad with the good, but over the course of your investing lifetime, you’ll get far more good and more of it…and that’s how you build wealth for retirement. Thanks to financial innovations like mutual funds and ETFs, we investors have easy access and entry to investments from around the world. And now especially with brokerage fee compression over the last few decades, we can do it for super cheap, too. When you think about it, it’s amazing how easily I can tap a couple buttons on my phone and invest in thousands of companies domestically and abroad. That is diversification! And it’s a great way to reduce external forces that can negatively impact your retirement portfolio. To wrap up, we saw negative news in Q1, and there’s going to be something negative in Q2 and so forth, but don’t let that derail your retirement portfolio. Control what you can control: how you react, time in the market, and diversifying your assets. If you need help, contact us here.