Capstone – July 30 2025

 By Bryce Pease CFP® Accredited Investment Fiduciary® Casey Morris CFP® Capstone Pacific Investment Strategies, Inc. California, Colorado, Nebraska

Investment Trends.

Are you sometimes a little amazed at hearing how well everyone else is doing in the stock or bond markets?  As long as you’re willing to listen, there’s no shortage of do-it- yourself investors willing to entertain you with their great successes.  If they’re on the right side of the market’s short-term swings day-traders may sleep well at night.  But while they might tell you differently, in the long run most do not survive.  The point may not be whether you made money in the market; it’s could you have done better?

According to many do-it-yourself or day-trading investors, they’re doing extremely well.  The statistics can tell a different story.  Is the internet a shortcut to wealth?  It is a shortcut to the same quirky, complex, beguiling market!  No matter whether you make trades on-line or off you can shortcut your way to losses as quickly as you can shortcut your way to gains.

With any investment, there’s some risk of losing all or part of it.  Regardless of what anyone may say to the contrary, investing often has huge risks.  When you make money, that’s good.  But more important, are you obtaining the best possible results for you?

Consider this:  For every transaction there’s a seller and a buyer, right?  Even when you’re certain that you’re getting a great buy, don’t you sometimes wonder why someone else is selling it?  What if the person who’s selling it knows what they’re doing?—heaven forbid!  And just who might this seller be, anyway?

For starters, the seller might be:

• A huge institutional investor.  Institutions have deep pockets, so they’re capable of doing investment research that few individuals could possibly afford.
• A trained money manager.  Managers specialize in, and make their living by, understanding how money flows into and out of healthy and unhealthy companies and industries.
• A corporate CEO, manager, board member, or major stockholder.  Corporate insiders—often with lucrative stock options—tend to be well informed about planned expansions, strategies, and mergers, and also about situations with a downside for their company.

Are you prepared to play the game against such opponents?  Frankly, it would be difficult for anyone other than a professional money manager to say “Yes” to that question!

This is because professional money managers may have advantages like greater skill and expertise in deciding when to buy and sell securities.  They should also have sufficient objectivity and experience not to overreact to short-term market conditions.  Professional managers can use their time and expertise to study and understand the intricacies of the market.  Ideally they can interpret trends and developments and act on them before others do.

Casey Morris CFP®

Bryce Pease CFP®