To see this blog post as a video, go here. Here is your Q2, 2023 Quarterly Report. Q2 was strong for stocks, and we needed it. I don’t know for sure, but I feel like we’ve dug out of the big hole of 2022 and we’re also finding our way out of the “sideways trading” with which we started ‘23. Let’s look at an overview of stocks and bonds for Q2 starting on page 3. I see a lot of green arrows led by the US stock market totaling a nearly 8.4% return for Q2. Take a look at the next slide on page 4, look at stock returns on a 1, 5 and 10 year time line. We see a bunch of green arrows, and that’s definitely to be expected over 5 and 10 years, simply because stocks are long-term investments; they are not made to be owned for a couple of months or even for a couple of years. You saw in 2022 what short-term stock ownership can do. It can wipe out 15%, 20% or more of your portfolio pretty quickly. While that is definitely hard to stomach, you want to focus and believe in what stocks can do for you and have done for you and others over several years and several decades. I mentioned earlier that stocks are long-term investments. In order to see their robust returns in your portfolio, you must have consistent exposure to them, because diversified stock investments compound your money. You invest a little, it grows, the earnings your investments generate grow, too, and the whole thing feeds upon itself and gets bigger and bigger…like a snowball rolling downhill. And that leads to the wrap up article written by David Booth, the founder of Dimensional Fund Advisors. You can pause the video to read through the article. The miracle of compounding allows us to snowball our retirement portfolios. This is how we build wealth for retirement: invest, let it grow, invest some more, and let that grow, plus, let the original investment and its growth, grow, too. The key takeaway with compounding is that you cannot interrupt it. Pulling money out of the stock market because you’re scared at what’s going on has such an incredibly detrimental impact on the overall health of your retirement portfolio. Were you at any point scared by 2022, or the pandemic driven stock market events of 2020, the end of 2018, were you an investor in 2007 or 2008? It’s natural to feel scared, uncertain, or unsure about the stock market, but those are temporary feelings and not long-term realities of the stock market. We make the most money when we feel the worst about stocks, so don’t interrupt compounding. If you have any uncertainties about investing and you need some guidance to get you through it, so that you can compound your portfolio and build wealth for your retirement and for future generations, reach out to me.