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Hello All - Fed Chairman Powell made his intentions clear today.  That is, to get inflation back down to 2%.  How they gonna do this?  Inflict some pain on the economy by raising borrowing costs.  Ok, why raise borrowing costs?  Because when borrowing costs go up, the number of borrowing transactions goes down.  Another word for a borrowing transaction is credit, and credit is money!!  That’s right.  When someone borrows from the bank, that creates m

Hello Everyone –  Colleen suggested that I write about inflation today.  Is it really running at 8.3%?  My answer is no….not anymore, and not based on the most recent data.  She asked me to explain this, and she told me to call it Economics 101.  Ok I said, I’ll try.  Here it goes.Inflation measures the change in prices over time.  This means we need a beginning date and an ending date. The government tries to measure inflation using the CPI,

Hello Again - As many of you know, Laurie has retired, but she wanted us to tell everyone that she is feeling better than she was and she is grateful for all the prayers and well wishes.  We miss her and we pray she has a solid recovery.Today I’d like to re-introduce Ernie Pepel.  Ernie comes from the automotive business and he started here in October 2019.  He has been here nearly 3 years now.  He passed the exam quickly to become an investment advisor and was licensed

Hello, it’s Wednesday again.  Lets talk about something different today.  I’ve been pondering an idea I wanted to run by you all to see what you think. Did you know that Minnesota is home to a substantial number of large businesses? It has about 18 companies in the fortune 500, but there are actually 50 some publicly traded companies that have annual revenue greater than $200M.  That’s a nice selection of businesses to invest in. We are toying with the

Hello Everyone, its Wednesday again! I want to be clear with you on something here. Although my indicators are telling me the bottom in stocks could be behind us already, the actual trend change has still not happened.  The S&P 500 remains in a downtrend at this time.  It has some hurdles to clear yet and that could happen soon, but it has not quite happened yet. I will be the first to let you know when that changes. So today I’d like to talk about rollovers.  A rol

Hello Again - The stock market has come a long way in a short period of time.  Since mid-June it has recovered approximately 60% of the decline that happened in the first part of the year.  So what’s the outlook now? There’s two general scenarios. Scenario 1, inflation starts to recede, the Fed starts to slow it’s interest rate hikes in the near future, the economy experiences a soft landing and stocks keep trending higher from here.  That’s the good s

The Russell 2000 is a market index that tries to capture the movement of 2000 different small-cap companies.  It is a popular index and is watched closely.  Small-caps make up 10% of our all stock ETF model.The chart below shows that the small-cap index has clearly broken through the downtrend line that started last fall.  This is a positive sign in my humble opinion, and more reason to believe that the worst could be behind us. Now we are watching for the large cap index to signa

Hello Everyone and welcome to August.  My how time flies doesn’t it?  This is a huge reason why I like to just sit tight with my investments……because a year or two goes by so fast it doesn’t pay to be trading in and out.  The long-term really isn’t that long-term after all. Let’s go back in time to the last time the US was experiencing high inflation and the Fed was raising interest rates rapidly.  That was back in the early 1980&rsq

Here are a few things to consider in regards to the 2020 retirement changes, remember to speak with a professional advisor for help with retirement options and financial goals.

A quick update regarding the stock market, as of May. We know it took a 35% sharp decline, it was fast and scary. BUT now it’s climbing! What does this mean? Read more here to find out…

Don’t let your hard earned money be subject to losing its value. Talk to Michael Traxler Wealth Management, LLC financial planners to see what your options are and how you can invest your funds.

Customized investment solutions through Michael Traxler Wealth Management, LLC can help you plan for retirement and reach your financial goals. Learn about what makes us unique.