Swinging into Spring

What a difference a week makes.  The S&P 500 opened April at 5,597 and proceeded to drop about 10% over the next five trading days (1).

First, some perspective. In April 2024, the S&P traded at about the same level as on April 10, 2025 (1).  If I told you a year ago that your portfolio would not make or lose any money over the next 12 months, that wouldn’t seem like a reason to panic. The market goes up over time, yes, but not all the time.  Although scary because of its quickness, this drop has merely given back the gains of the last 12 months.

But knowing where we’ve been isn’t nearly as helpful as where we might be going.  And the hard truth is that there’s a lot we don’t know. We don’t know how all US trading partners will react, where tariff rates will settle, or how long they’ll stay there. We don’t know how the dynamic economy will continue to react to these new trade barriers.  Even if we did know those economic ramifications, we don’t know how the stock and bond markets will respond.

The good news is that we are once again seeing the benefits of diversification.  As of April 10, 2025, the major US bond and international stock indices are about flat for 2025.

With so much negativity in the news about things we can’t change, it’s important to focus on what we can control.  We can’t control the markets, but we can control our commitment to our investment strategy and financial plan through both up and down markets.  We can’t always control when we need to spend money, but we can control what we sell to fund that spending.

I’m reminded of the famous Warren Buffet adage to be greedy when others are fearful.  And it’s certainly easy to feel afraid right now, I know I do when I watch the news.  But it’s often when the future looks bleakest that long-term investment returns look the best.  We need only look back to 2008 or March 2020 to find two recent examples.

Citation

(1) https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/%5EGSPC/history/

Disclosures

Investment advice offered through Great Valley Advisor Group, a Registered Investment Advisor. Great Valley Advisor Group and Rope Financial are separate entities.  

Content in this material is for general information only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. All performance referenced is historical and is no guarantee of future results. All indices are unmanaged and may not be invested into directly.

 All investing involves risk including loss of principal. No strategy assures success or protects against loss.

 Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

There can be no guarantee that any strategies promoted will be successful.