At Peachtree Investment Partners, we have a long-term relationship with our clients. We work with you to build a customized portfolio that reflects your goals, your financial situation and your approach to risk. Our primary focus has been and remains on preservation of principal.
We use a number of criteria to evaluate companies for client portfolios. We look at a company’s historical performance as well as the potential for future performance. In particular, we consider a company’s profitability and its positioning in the market. We also prefer companies that pay dividends.
We make dividend-paying stocks the centerpiece of our clients’ portfolios. Dividend-paying stocks can add significantly to overall returns and also can help smooth out volatile markets. Although we do invest in some select stocks that do not pay dividends, we focus mainly on those that do.
There is no doubt that the last year, especially the last half, was tough for the stock market. Many investors are feeling jittery. But it is important to differentiate between short-term drops and increases – even when those individual drops and increases are large – and long-term market outlooks. If you are worried about what will happen with your portfolio this year, it can be helpful to look at some facts.
If you have been an investor for more than a decade, you might be getting an unsettling sense of deja vu. This current bull market – one of the longest in history – has had relatively little volatility in its nine-year run. But recent weeks have been characterized by big gains followed by bigger, stomach-lurching drops. On last Friday morning the Standard & Poor's 500 Index was down 10 percent from its 52-week high, putting it at least temporarily into an official correction.
There are times when the market movement seems not to reflect what is really going on. This is one of those times.
In the first quarter of this year, companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 reported earnings growth of almost 25 percent. In this quarter, earnings are expected to be almost as good. Yet at the start of the year, the S&P 500 was at 2683.7. At the close on July 30, the S&P was 2802.6, which is up only about 4.4 percent. If earnings are so strong, why isn't the market reflecting that?
