📈It's Over
So Long 2021
Before we dive into our year-end review, we would like to thank everyone who has stuck with us over the last 6 months.
Reading about scintillating topics ranging from life insurance to Roth IRAs takes dedication no matter how many memes we use to break it up. And our last 2 posts have actually been some of our most-read since launching despite the holidays. For your loyalty?
2021 Recap
Remember when 2021 started with a lot of hope? Specifically about the rollout and adoption of the vaccine? The ability to get vaccinated and see friends and family overpowered any financial topic as everyone went back out into the real world. And it set the tone for the year in stocks, which responded as expected by going up.
Since we weren’t up and running, we are going to assume there was nothing else to report in Q1 (the events of January 6th seem like a day we don’t want to get into). So let’s turn to Q2 which was a continuation of the optimism from Q1. Vaccine rollouts continued, Covid cases down, Job Market booming, it's the roaring 20’s all over again. Unfortunately, this led to the ongoing issue we first covered in one of our first blogs - Inflation.
Which the Fed did a great job covering up, for a while:
But, with everything else going so well, who had time to notice? It became the summer of reopening and stonks continued higher. In fact, we saw a whole wave of IPOs launched in Q3. Most notably Robinhood which we covered in a piece that became more prescient recently.
Heading into Q4 all seemed great until Omicron showed up.
This caused stocks to get a little jittery but that could have been due to the Fed’s taper program. What do we know? We just write blogs.
What's the Upside?
The amount of turmoil we experienced this year feels like it was enough to fill decades in the past, so if you are exhausted, we don’t blame you. But the upside is you survived and hopefully learned a lot with us along the way. It’s always important to sift through the noise and think long-term, especially when it comes to investing. Cheers to 2022.
For Your Weekend
This is where we’ll post a round-up of essays, podcasts, and streaming shows to check out over your weekend. We cast a wide net so you don’t have to.
Read:
My Favorite Investment Writing of 2021 by Nick Maggiulli
We’re fans of Nick Maggiulli: his blog is on the short-list of financial resources that are worth your time (second to The Weekly Upside, of course). He’s compiled 17 of his favorite posts from the year, on topics ranging from stock return expectations to understanding DAOs and NFTs.
A Retrospective on “10 Questions for 2021” by Goldman Sachs Research
Don’t you wish the prognosticators out there would actually audit their predictions? Last year, Goldman Sachs’ research team published answers to 10 questions ahead of 2021. They recently went back to see whether their predictions were correct.
I Bond Returns: Almost Too Good To Be True by Sam Dogen
I Bonds are a recent issue by the Treasury Department that almost seem too good to be true. They currently offer a 7.12% yield that’s locked in until April 2022. After that, the yield will float with the rate of inflation. Sam walks through the pros and cons in the linked article and we wish we had thought of writing something sooner.
Chuckle:
