Tech Stocks Weigh Heavy On The S&P 500 Show 72

When referring to the stock market, many people equate the S&P 500 as the market. The S&P 500 is an index of 500 large companies, but did you know the largest companies make up a larger percentage of the index? 

Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft account for 22% of the entire index. What do they all have in common? They are technology companies. The bottom 250 or smallest companies comprise just 10% of the index. The point being is the technology companies are critical to how the index performs. 

The S&P 500 has more than doubled in the last five years, and it hasn’t been hard to make money in the stock market with the accommodative stance the government has taken. The government has kept interest rates artificially low since the turn of the century.

Fundamentally, we know that low interest rates are accommodative to technology companies, especially those in a start up phase. It allows them to get going with less debt. This is one of the reasons we experienced the technology crash in the early 2000s. Companies were fearful ultra low lending rates were going away. When the government begins raising interest rates, technology tends to be most quickly impacted which may lead to the overall S&P 500 being impacted. It may create a wave of disruption. 

In retirement, it’s important to have a proverbial bucket of money that productively grows but can never go down. This may be a remedy for unruly markets. We need part of our money to be in the stock market for several reasons, but it’s important to use all the tools of financial planning and be well diversified. If you’d like to talk about this topic or others or you have questions, feel free to call our office at 864.641.7955. 

Each year, I write a handful of things I want to accomplish down on a small card and typically fold it up and put in my wallet. I found my card from 2012 recently and I made it a goal to learn to fly fish, but it never happened that year.

 I hold the philosophy that it’s better to shoot for something and miss than to never shoot. With that said, I have learned to manage my expectations for my goals. In other words, I’m realistic.

Carl, my father-in-law, had been wanting to try fly-fishing also, so we did research on how to go about learning the skill. We found an instructor named Aaron who would teach us the basics, and all we had to do was show up.

Last week, we went to Saluda River in the northern part of Greenville County to meet our instructor. I grew up fishing, but never for pretty fish. I have never been one to have the...

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