Take a deep dive into historical data to see how the market has performed during election cycles.

In the world of finance, few indicators strike fear into the hearts of investors quite like the dreaded inverted yield curve. It's often hailed as an ominous harbinger of economic downturns, sending shockwaves through markets and sparking widespread concern. But does an inverted yield curve truly signify an impending recession every time? Let's delve into this financial phenomenon and separate fact from fiction.

Throughout history, there always seems to be a new grouping of stocks receiving a fancy name after performing well. When hearing headlines about stocks like this, a common question that arises is: why not just buy those select stocks? Here at Greenspring, we believe in utilizing pooled investment vehicles like mutual funds or ETFs, where you still get exposure to popular stocks but are much more diversified and face less risk.

While Greenspring likes some alternative assets and has included them in our client portfolios over the years, we do not think Bitcoin merits a dedicated portion of an investment portfolio. Bitcoin is almost pure speculation with little intrinsic value.  Unlike stocks and bonds, there are no profits, dividends or interest, and the price is based only on what a buyer is willing to pay.

It seems like we cannot go a day without hearing questions about a recession. Will we enter a recession, how long will it last, and how bad will it be? No one truly knows the answer to any of those questions, but we thought we would look at one of the favorite data points economists tend to look at in order to identify upcoming recessions, the Philadelphia Fed Business Outlook Index, and whether it has any predictive ability on stock returns.