News & Insights

Historically, financial professionals have used the analogy of a person sitting on a 3-legged stool to give their client a visual aid for retirement planning. The three legs of the stool represented the three sources of income in retirement: Social Security, pensions, and personal savings. In order to illustrate and stress the importance of having diverse sources of income during retirement, the professional would ask, “What would happen if that stool was missing a leg?” Unfortunately, employer-sponsored pension plans have become virtually non-existent over the past several decades, so most people will be missing this leg of the stool. Also, individuals have little control over growing their Social Security benefits, which will typically replace around 40% of pre-retirement income. This adds more pressure on people to grow their personal savings in order to have a strong financial foundation and enjoy the golden years of retirement stress free.

Personal savings refers to any assets that an individual has saved for retirement. This could range from a money market account at their local bank to a retirement account offered by their employer. Keep in mind that the type of account used for retirement savings could be just as important as what the savings are invested in.

First of all, I would like to welcome James Skubik as a shareholder in Provident. James came to Provident almost five years ago after many years of experience in the investment management industry and before that in investment banking. James earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Case Western Reserve University. He is a CFA Charterholder as are Dan Boyle, Miles Putnam, and I, so it is fitting he joins the three of us as a shareholder in the business. Don’t read anything into this change beyond rewarding a valued member of our investment team because it is good for the business and for our clients.

We’re now several months past our transition to Schwab and I wanted to provide an update to our clients. Virtually all our clients made the journey with us, and we have considered our effort complete since August.

Wall Street’s machinery has been calibrated to encourage activity from investors, often to their detriment. To prod action, there are Wall Street analysts recommending “buys” and “sells” on individual companies along with a parade of market strategists who appear in the media to suggest the right strategy for the moment. As one example, Barron’s recently ran its Fall Market Outlook, which helpfully included a “shopping list for fall,” highlighting sectors strategists recommend overweighting and underweighting. Though many of these strategists are thoughtful and smart, and I often find value in understanding their rationale, I wonder who acts on these recommendations. I envision someone reminiscent of the woman from the Interactive Brokers’ commercial a few years ago who had to excuse herself while at dinner with a companion in order to make some “hedging trades” on her phone in response to some breaking news.

I try not to be an investment snob, turning up my nose at those who choose to pursue a different path than we do at Provident. We have time-tested reasons for our process, and ultimately believe our strategy positions clients well for achieving their desired long-term outcomes. That doesn’t mean it is the only way or that you can’t find success YOLO-ing options on meme stocks such as GameStop or by investing in your favored cryptocurrency. I would argue those paths make achieving long-term financial goals significantly less likely, but as the recent environment has shown, under the right circumstances one can find tremendous success. We view investing as a serious business, yet that doesn’t prevent us from finding humor when someone makes a life-altering sum of money thanks to a cryptocurrency based on a dog that initially was intended purely as a joke.

I got together with a few other neighborhood dads recently to play a board game called Q.E. The name is short for “Quantitative Easing,” a term that entered the public conscious when Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve started buying investment securities to improve banks’ balance sheets during the financial crisis of 2008-09. The game was published in 2019, and while its theme harkens back to 2008-09, it also accidentally anticipated the Covid-19 pandemic.

Players assume the roles of central bankers around the world competing to bail out too-big-to-fail national industries, printing huge amounts of money in the process. One of the game’s rules is that the player who prints the most money destroys his or her national currency and automatically loses the game. The strategy is to abuse your national currency as much as possible without totally destroying it. It is funny how this game mechanic seems to agree with the incentives that drive real-world governments and central banks. Its designers must know a thing or two about political economy. Throughout history, governments have almost universally favored higher inflation while trying to avoid the disruptive and humiliating consequences of straying too far into hyperinflation.

As Miles discussed in this month’s Investment Comments, inflation has reared its ugly head for the first time in many years. For those of us that remember the 1970s “stagflation,” a combination of persistently high inflation paired with slow economic growth, just the word “inflation” brings to mind poor stock returns. Let’s delve a bit deeper into the damage inflation causes, why it has spiked, the prospects for the spike to continue, and our thoughts on what you should do with your portfolio, particularly your stock allocation.

Why is Inflation a Problem?

Rising inflation causes problems for everyone. For consumers, the ability to purchase goods and services is reduced as the currency they hold is no longer worth what it was in the past. Businesses endure two negatives: revenue can be suppressed as consumers can’t buy as much as they could before, and input costs are now higher, hurting profits. The overall economy slows until everyone has adjusted to the new price levels. If inflation is persistent these impacts are reinforced as workers demand higher wages to offset the reduction in purchasing power and business profits take a further hit from the higher wage cost. In the 1970s persistent inflation, exacerbated by higher energy input costs from two oil shocks, created stagflation as the economy never got a chance to fully adjust.

It is estimated that over the next two decades, Baby Boomers will pass down a whopping $68 trillion worth of assets to younger generations. Receiving an inheritance should be considered a blessing, but if not handled correctly it can quickly become a curse. If you’re not careful, you run the risk of losing your money just as quickly as you receive it. According to a study conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, one-third of people who receive an inheritance spend all of it in the first two years. With some sensible planning and foresight, you can make sure that your inheritance takes care of you and your family long after you receive it.

Here are some ideas to help set you on the right course with your newfound wealth.

First, take time to grieve and don’t make decisions right away. When you lose a loved one, you’re not thinking clearly enough to make sound financial decisions. Deciding what to do with an inheritance during this period can be overwhelming, upsetting, and cause confusion. There is nothing wrong with letting your inheritance sit for a while until you are ready to focus and develop a plan.

Work continues in earnest on the transition to Schwab. There is a lot of preparation that goes into changing custodians. This is often referred to as “repapering” in the industry, as every account requires new paperwork. There is the logistical challenge of gathering information for each client and each account in a practical format. There is the professional challenge of interacting with a new customer service team and a new software interface. Most importantly, there is the challenge of providing consistent service to clients and making the process as seamless as possible.

I will not rehash our explanations for making the transition, but I will give you an update on where it stands and why we have been asking you to confirm personal details that may seem trivial or unrelated to investment strategy. Our goal remains to complete the process mostly digitally. Our clients have been willing and helpful participants to that end. We plan to continue utilizing digital forms and signatures in our normal course of business, when possible. Reducing analog paperwork between you and your custodian should improve speed and efficiency.

It is said that 70%-90% of new businesses fail within a decade. Imagine our pride that the little investment business founded by Ralph Seger and Maury Elvekrog on July 29, 1981 will soon celebrate its 40th anniversary!

Allow me to share a trip down memory lane, 40 years of history in a 10-minute read. After successful careers as a chemical engineer and industrial psychologist, respectively, Ralph Seger and Maury Elvekrog took their hobby of stock investing to the next level. Both began working for a local investment firm and quickly realized their investment philosophy and client focus were more aligned with each other than with their employer. Seger-Elvekrog Inc. soon followed.

Imagine the boldness to start a new investment business in 1981 in the midst of back-to-back recessions and bear markets! In retrospect, it was a wonderful time, as the United States was on the cusp of a long bull market lasting almost two decades with only brief interruptions.

“People say that life is short, but it isn’t short. It’s very long.”

-Frank Abagnale

The battle cry of the modern speculator is “YOLO” meaning You Only Live Once. It is a kind of greedy twist on the “Carpe Diem” motto that Robin Williams invoked to motivate lackadaisical adolescent boys in Dead Poets Society. YOLO is obsessed with money—grab it all now before you die. People don’t yell “YOLO” when they give money to a charity or finish a challenging book. They could, but they don’t. They yell YOLO when they sink their annual bonus into cryptocurrency, or maybe when their broker approves a margin loan application. This greed is combined with a sort of nihilism—who cares if things don’t turn out how you’re hoping? In their view, living is doing outrageous things for a slim chance at a miraculous payday. I wonder what everybody will be yelling when it stops working?

2020 was a very strange year for markets. Over the past year we likely set a record for the use of the word “unprecedented” on earnings calls. I suppose a pandemic combined with meaningful amounts of global monetary and fiscal support will do that. Going into 2020 analysts expected 5% revenue growth and 9% EPS growth, leading to an approximate 5% increase in the S&P 500. This was not particularly noteworthy, as the default estimate for growth in the S&P every year is a mid- to high-single-digit percentage gain. Though the final numbers for 2020 have yet to be counted, expectations are for a 1% revenue decline accompanied by a 13% drop in EPS, well below initial expectations. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 advanced by a better-than-expected mid-teens percentage. This goes to show the extreme difficulty in making forecasts, yet Wall Street continues to try.