Steve Booth, the Chairman and CEO of Baird, recently released the company’s Annual Report and an update on the state of our business. Baird owns five different companies, all of which serve various capital market industries. Baird’s businesses range from helping retail clients navigate retirement, to managing mutual funds, and even helping business owners take their companies to market. As you can imagine, the prolonged sluggish stock market, slowing economy, inflationary pressure, and political uncertainty have made for unique challenges over the past year. His personal message to Baird associates and clients across the globe was one of stability, prudence, discipline, and discretion. The title of his letter to the Baird family: Resilience.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this word and what it means for our clients, our team, and our families. Resilience is defined as “the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties.” Another iteration of this theme is “toughness.”
It’s been 15 years since The Great Recession and many of those on the front lines have long since retired, replaced by younger investors who cannot recall how abysmal that time period was in our history. Similarly, passing time has clouded all our memories. Having just lived through the worst bond market and 7th worst stock market year ever in 2022, a lot of people are expecting the worst. People worry about interest rates, inflation, the elections, foreign relations, and of course, their own financial security. These are all legitimate concerns.
What can we do? First and foremost, we can review our plans and strategies. How has the last 18 months changed your long-term plan? Remember, our strategies and plans are built for the tougher times, too. While many were boasting outsized returns in 2019, 2020, and 2021, we stayed conservative, balanced, and stable. We invest to smooth out the ups and downs, and that hasn’t changed. We’re steadfast in the same philosophies that helped our clients navigate 9/11 and the tech bubble, through the Great Recession and what we’re facing now. If you don’t feel like you fully understand the strategies you have in place and how they are built to weather this and future storms, let’s talk.
Uncertainty is a constant when investing, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make progress. In this newsletter you’ll find many wonderful events, initiatives, and projects our team has been moving forward during the first half of 2023. In April we hosted the inaugural Southern Kentucky Financial Literacy event, free and open to the community. We’ve achieved new designations, received community awards, contributed to broad national initiatives, and continued sharpening and honing our skills to better serve our clients. In a word, we’ve been resilient.
I hope you are encouraged as you flip through our newsletter to see your wealth management team not scared, sheltering in place hoping this all passes, but embracing where we are right now, and doing what we can to be a ballast in our community and for our clients. This, too, shall pass, and while another set of challenges is sure to be waiting on the other side, know that our team will be here, working to help make your financial life a little easier. We hope you can take some comfort in the message of our CEO, choosing resilience over fear, and toughness over anxiety. We’re right here with you.
Drew Richey
RB2023-0605