After today’s edition, The Lowry Letter® will be on hiatus until mid-July. Please also note that our office and the markets will close on July 3rd in observance of the Independence Day holiday.
As we approach the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we reflect on the remarkable success of the United States. We are grateful to live and work in a country where freedom, opportunity, and self-determination remain central ideals.
We continue to believe in the strength of the American economic system. It is certainly not perfect, but its capacity for innovation and adaptation is still the envy of much of the world.
From time to time, our elected leaders enact policies that help (or hinder) that system. Often, the same policy produces both intended and unintended consequences. Through it all, entrepreneurs and innovators continue to reshape the economy, with artificial intelligence serving as one of today’s more significant examples.
Wherever you look, investors are trying to decide how to take part in these changes. There is certainly no shortage of opinions.
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This piece from Capital Group highlights the central idea we hope you remember:
Time is more important than timing.
“Trying to navigate the peaks and valleys of market returns, investors naturally want to invest at the lows and sell at the highs. Unfortunately, no one can consistently predict when those moments will occur. The desire to avoid temporary declines may reduce anxiety, but it can also cause investors to miss much of the long-term growth.”
There are no guarantees in investing. But history consistently reminds us that patient ownership of productive assets has been one of the more reliable ways to build wealth over time.
For many investors, we continue to believe that remaining invested in a thoughtfully diversified portfolio—one designed around your specific goals and situation, is a better strategy than trying to predict the market’s next move.
*Diversification does not assure a profit or protect against loss in declining markets, and diversification cannot guarantee that any objective or goal will be achieved
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Here are some other things that caught our attention:
- We like this rundown of classic Wall Street-related comics. The names (or sectors) change, but the story is very consistent.
- Some good news: there is an exciting link between the shingles vaccine and lower incidence of dementia.
- AI enthusiasts are starting to use agents for various tasks, to positive effect in many cases. However, they are far from foolproof and seem sensitive to “nudges” that would not affect humans to the same extent. It’s a very promising area, but not ready for every possible use.