The Lowry Letter®

Happy Halloween! Whatever the conditions in your area, we hope that you and your loved ones have a safe and enjoyable time with whatever adaptations or new circumstances are required.

We’re very excited to announce our next virtual event, scheduled for Nov 10^th at 6:30pm. We will hear from gifted photographer and long-time friend Mac Stone about some of his more recent adventures. Some of you may recall that we sponsored an outstanding talk by Mac several years ago when his book Everglades: America’s Wetland debuted. More info to follow.

For more about Mac, visit his website, https://www.macstonephoto.com/

We wanted to start this week by recognizing a very important milestone. Bea Caldwell, our Client Relationship Manager, recently reached her 20^th anniversary as a member of our team! We sometimes joke that she is the “Cuban Mom” of our office. These are a few of the things that demonstrate what that means:

• If our workspace gets too disorganized, she will stand there until we clean it up.
• She often brings delicious food in and we are expected to eat it (and we happily do).
• If someone needs help, she will jump right up and figure out a way to fix the problem.
• She treats us as she would family, and we are all blessed for it.

We had a great discussion with Mark Seaman and Tom O’Neil of American Funds on the state of the economy in light of the pandemic and upcoming elections. We’ve included a brochure in the Lowry Letter® that we shared during the webinar that contains some of the key points and would be glad to discuss them with you.

A key takeaway- the pandemic and election have not changed the principles of sound investing. Investing according to your specific goals and risk tolerance, and then remaining appropriately invested, is a key to long-term success. This is true regardless of the political party in control of the government.

 Next week we will have an interesting talk about investing in an election year with a great speaker, Mark Seaman from the Capital Group. Capital Group is the parent company of American Funds.

Mark is an equity investment director at Capital Group. He has 26 years of investment industry experience and has been with the firm for 14 years. Earlier in his career at Capital, Mark managed the Advisory Resources Group interacting with research analysts and broker dealers. Prior to joining Capital, he was director of mutual fund research, director of alternative investments and director of non-proprietary fund distribution at Legg Mason Wood Walker. He holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Maryland. He also holds the Chartered Financial Analyst® designation and is a member of the Baltimore Security Analysts Society. Mark is based in Washington, D.C.

We will send out the link and other details in a separate email later this week. Please let us know if you have any specific questions for Mark.

We hope you enjoy this week’s letter.

As we mentioned last week, we will hold 2 webinars on investing and the markets on October 8th. One will be at noon and the other at 6pm. If you have questions for our speaker that day, please let us know. More info about him and the program is coming next week.

Also, as a post-election palate cleanser, we are planning a non-investment, non-political talk from one our favorite nature photographers on November 5 and look forward to sharing that with you soon.

Finally, please mark your calendars for our next online client event, to be held October 8^th. We will discuss investing & elections with commentary from American Funds. We will hold it twice that day, noon and 6pm, to accommodate different schedules. 

More information to follow. 

After a strong August, September has led with a string of declines led by the tech-heavy Nasdaq.

While declines are never enjoyable, they are a normal aspect of the markets and should be expected after the recent positive movement. You can view our August Monthly Market Recap here and read more about the September volatility in this post.

As with all Federal holidays, our office will be closed on Monday in observance of Labor Day. We hope you can find some rest and relaxation during the long weekend!

We are looking forward to the first football game of the season for our alma mater, BYU. The Cougars will play the Naval Academy Midshipmen on Labor Day in front of an empty stadium and with ESPN’s top team announcing.

A few weeks ago, our friend Joni Youngwirth gave a presentation about mindful retirement. For those of you who were able to participate, and those who could not, we’ve attached a template related to her discussion.

Joni presented 6 concepts to consider when thinking about life in retirement. In each of the 6 sections of this template there are a few trigger words that engage one to think about what they want their life to look like. While our short session didn’t cover all of these, they spark contemplation about how prepared you are, as well as some changes you may want to put in place for smoother sailing before and during retirement.

We think even people further away from retirement will benefit from this examination. You can identify, on a scale of 1-10, your satisfaction with each of these areas and use it to identify areas that need more attention. We hope it is helpful!