This past Monday, we held our monthly investment policy committee meeting. The purpose of this meeting is to help us make the most educated and informed investment decisions for our clients. Our discussions are often lively ones and help us all remain sharp and focused on our clients’ success. As we look ahead to 2023, we believe that investors will continue to face a challenging market due to uncertainties around the war in Ukraine, lingering impacts of Covid-19, and fears of a recession as inflation fades.
However, investors who focus long-term will continue to look past the challenges and uncertainties of the short term to recognize opportunities that will set them up for success in the future.
We believe it prudent to keep exposure to growth equity investments, but continue to move towards value – namely through exposure to high-quality names with solid fundamentals. Growth and value mutual funds are two approaches to investing. Growth funds seek companies that offer strong earnings increases, while Value funds focus on stocks that are undervalued in the market, but have good fundamentals. Both of these styles complement each other, but in an inflationary environment, the pressure on corporate earnings can cause growth funds to cool. This often leads to the decision to tilt the portfolio a little more toward value funds until the economy signals a change.
We will continue to monitor maturity dates on fixed income as we believe interest rate increases will slow and level off to historical norms in the next 12-24 months. After reviewing corporate bond rates versus US Treasuries, we believe the risk-adjusted, investment-grade corporate bonds do not warrant a shift from US Treasury bonds.
If you’re interested in learning more about our perspective, our advisors would enjoy speaking with you. Please contact us at (706) 364-4281 or at [email protected] and we can set up a call to speak with you.
