True financial confidence comes from perspective. This quarter offered a reminder that markets don’t move in straight lines—April’s turbulence made headlines, but as history has shown, recoveries follow setbacks. Michael Brady shares why he remains optimistic, how he helps clients focus on what they can control, and why aligning wealth with your deeper purpose will always matter more than short-term noise.
Ready to explore how your wealth can align with your purpose? Let’s start the conversation.
Transcript
Hi there. Mike Brady with Generosity Wealth Management, a comprehensive full-service financial services firm headquartered here in Boulder, Colorado. It is the end of the quarter. It has been basically a pretty darn good year except for one month, which was April, which of course got all the headlines. Lots of stuff happened in April, and at this point in time, with the returns for the unmanaged stock market indexes where they are, historically 75% of the time the year ends positive. But you know what, there’s a lot of time left. We’ve got October, November, and December. But I’m feeling very good and very optimistic.
It is important for us to remember the long-term view. The reason why I bring that up is, look at this chart up on the screen, and I’ve just circled what happened in April. When you look at that, that’s multiple years. I know those things are going to happen. But the reason why we have equities, the reason why we have investments long term, is because times like I’ve just circled historically always recover.
I remember back in April, a client emailed me because they were watching the news, and it was all about the tariffs and a catastrophe—the doom scrolling. If you’re looking for negative news, you’re going to find it everywhere you look. It was like, why do I have equities? Remind me again why we have equities? The reason we have them is because of the nice recovery. It was negative 19 on an unmanaged stock market index like the S&P 500 for the year. It is now in the double digits for the S&P. 14% positive for the year. Quite the reversal and overreaction, which I said at the time and which I believe has been proven out.
The market will go up, it will go down. That is the one given that I’m going to express out in the world. If you are looking for negative things, I feel that there are a lot of advisors, a lot of TV pundits who do a lot of fearmongering, a lot of fear-based selling or advice, and that’s never my approach. I believe that every problem has a solution. When a client comes in to see me, I want you always to leave with some hope and optimism, because frankly, for the negativity—and if you’re looking for negativity, you’re going to find it—my job is to find the positive solution in every situation.
When it comes to working with me from a wealth management point of view, it is finding where you want to go, what’s your why, what’s your purpose, what’s your financial goal that we’re trying to get to, and how are we going to get all the balls that are in the air, which is your life? Things that have happened in the past, things that are happening right now in the present, and things that you want to have happen in the future—how can they all be put down into an equation so we can be diligent and proactive about the particular variables in that equation? The equation’s answer is what you want, which is the desired outcome. That’s it.
It’s not all investment related, and it’s not about worrying too much about things that you may not have control over. Let’s have control over the things that we do have control over, which is understanding the aspects of our lives, where we are presently, where we want to go, and how they fit in. Investments are a part of that, but it is only one part.
That’s why I call myself a wealth manager, not an investment advisor. I care about increasing your wealth and helping guide you like a coach, but you get to be the hero. The success and the failure is yours. We are now nine months into the year, and I’m feeling very good about the next three months. But you know what, our time horizon is not three months, so what’s most important is that we have the right duration for you, that you and I communicate very well if you are my client.
If you are not my client, consider being my client.
If you’re one of my clients, please, I am bringing on new clients. I have an infrastructure that supports me meeting with good people that you feel I could help out, like I have helped you out. I will treat them like kings and queens, and I will really do what I can to understand where they want to go and help guide them through the full-service financial services firm that I have, which is Generosity Wealth Management. We align wealth with purpose and possibility, and that possibility is what may or may not even be in your mind right now. That’s something we can explore together. Michael Brady, Generosity Wealth Management, 303-747-6455.
Have a wonderful fall, and I will talk with you at next month’s newsletter as the year continues to unfold. Thank you.