FAS Market Update December 2022

FAS Market Update December 2022

“The days are long, but the years are short”

As we reflect on 2022, it seems this paradox holds a lot of truth!  Investors have endured a volatile calendar year dominated by inflation rates not experienced for decades.  Subsequently, interest rates have seen large increases affecting prices for stocks, bonds, and a variety of financial assets.  To say it’s been a challenging year is likely an understatement for most.

With the year winding down, we want to express our sincere appreciation for your trust to help map your financial priorities and navigate your plan through these inevitable tumultuous periods.  FAS Wealth Partners understands you have many options to steward your financial life.  As your advisors our daily goal is to affirm your confidence in us and earn your business for many years to come.

We hope you’ve found our periodic economic, market and political updates helpful in making sense of the seemingly unending deluge of information this year.  As you take time to rest and enjoy time with family and friends, this last monthly update will focus on a list of recommended books as last-minute stocking stuffers or for personal enrichment.  Happy Holidays to you and yours!

 

The Psychology of Money

By Morgan Housel

“Doing well with money isn’t necessarily about what you know. It’s about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people.”

We were fortunate to have this author present at an event we hosted in September.  His book and presentation were very well received.  There is a replay available upon request, please reach out to your primary advisor if you would like to view.

 

 

Thinking Fast and Slow

By Daniel Kahneman

“Daniel Kahneman, renowned psychologist and winner of Nobel Prize in economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think.  System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation―each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions.”

 

Greenlights

By Matthew McConaughey

“I’ve been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me.”

 

 

Thinking in Bets

By Annie Duke

“Annie Duke, a former World Series of Poker champion turned business consultant, draws on examples from business, sports, politics, and (of course) poker to share tools anyone can use to embrace uncertainty and make better decisions. For most people, it’s difficult to say “I’m not sure” in a world that values and, even, rewards the appearance of certainty. But professional poker players are comfortable with the fact that great decisions don’t always lead to great outcomes and bad decisions don’t always lead to bad outcomes.”    

 

 

Alchemy

By Rory Sutherland

“Based on thirty years of field work inside the largest experiment in human behavior ever conceived—the forever-unfolding pageant of consumer capitalism—Alchemy, the revolutionary book by Ogilvy advertising legend Rory Sutherland, whose TED talks have been viewed nearly seven million times, decodes human behavior, blending leading-edge scientific research, absurdly entertaining storytelling, deep psychological insight, and practical case studies from his storied career working on campaigns for AmEx, Microsoft, and others.”

 

The Rational Optimist

By Matt Ridley

”Matt Ridley puts current perceptions about violence, wealth, and the environment into historical perspective, reaching back thousands of years to advocate global free trade, smaller government, and the use of fossil fuels. He confidently takes on the experts, from modern sociologists who fret over the current level of violence in the world to environmentalists who disdain genetically modified crops. An ambitious and sunny paean to human ingenuity, this is an argument for why ambitious optimism is morally mandatory.”

 

 

  The Compound Effect

  By Darren Hardy

“As the central curator of the success media industry for over 25 years, author Darren Hardy has heard it all, seen it all, and tried most of it. This book reveals the core principles that drive success. The Compound Effect contains the essence of what every super achiever needs to know, practice, and master to obtain extraordinary success.”

 

 

 

Narrative Economics

By Robert J. Shiller

“In a world in which internet troll farms attempt to influence foreign elections, can we afford to ignore the power of viral stories to affect economies? In this groundbreaking book, Nobel Prize–winning economist and New York Times bestselling author Robert Shiller offers a new way to think about the economy and economic change. Using a rich array of historical examples and data, Shiller argues that studying popular stories that affect individual and collective economic behavior―what he calls “narrative economics”―has the potential to vastly improve our ability to predict, prepare for, and lessen the damage of financial crises, recessions, depressions, and other major economic events.”

 

Atomic Habits

By James Clear

“No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving–every day. James Clear, one of the world’s leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results. If you’re having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn’t you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don’t want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you’ll get a proven system that can take you to new heights.”   

 

      

Disunited Nations

By Peter Zeihan

“In Disunited Nations, geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan presents a series of counterintuitive arguments about the future of a world where trade is coming apart and international institutions are losing their power. Germany will decline as the most powerful country in Europe, with France taking its place. Every country should prepare for the collapse of China, not North Korea. We are already seeing, as Zeihan predicted, Russian military action in Europe beginning with the invasion of Ukraine. The world has gotten so accustomed to the “normal” of an American-dominated order that we have all forgotten the historical norm: several smaller, competing powers and economic systems throughout Europe and Asia. America isn’t the only nation stepping back from the international system.”