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The year 2022 began with financial market volatility we haven’t experienced since COVID burst onto our consciousness in early 2020. The uncertainties that inspired this volatility primarily surrounded the pace of our U.S. Federal Reserve bank unwinding their outsized fiscal and monetary policy response to the pandemic. Those uncertainties remain and have now converged with the conflagration in Ukraine. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Ukrainians and the entire region.

While in most cases people name individuals as beneficiaries on their IRA (Individual Retirement Account), some alternatives should be considered. It is not uncommon for parents and family members to have concerns around how their heir may handle the sudden sum of money when they receive it. Naming your beneficiary correctly is an integral aspect of sound estate planning and all options must be considered.

Our clients work hard to accumulate wealth and we want to help them be tax-efficient wherever possible. The $10,000 cap on what one can deduct in state and local taxes (SALT) is frustrating for California residents who pay some of the nation’s highest state income taxes. To reduce their federal tax liability, California taxpayers who own “pass-through” business entities may want to investigate a recently legalized “workaround” to the SALT cap.

The ongoing pandemic and trillions of stimulus dollars governments injected into economies to support businesses and consumers have created many dislocations that will take time to work through. Supply-chain bottlenecks, labor shortages, and pent-up demand are creating inflation at levels we have not seen in 40 years. Today this inflation is more of a concern to the average investor than COVID. Although we expect the pace of economic growth to slow because of these dislocations, we remain optimistic our American economy will continue expanding in the new year.

Our fourth quarter Proactive Asset Management Webinar highlights the different roads our economy may take as we head into the new year. Will inflation persist? Will labor markets continue to struggle? Tune in to see our analytic breakdown of the economic data as well as how we're positioning our portfolios as a result.

ESG stands for Environmental, Social & Governance. ESG funds originated from investors’ desire to align their values with their investing. They wanted to be socially conscious with their money, supporting ethical behavior and social causes important to them, without sacrificing returns. They also wanted some standardization and for a third party to do the vetting for them. The ESG criteria and designation allow investors to evaluate investment opportunities based on not only the financial data but also on what many consider to be moral grounds.