Keeping Things in Perspective

I know you've been receiving a lot of emails from us over the past couple of weeks, but with the situation in Ukraine growing more volatile, I wanted to reach out with further updates. We typically tweak our investment models on a quarterly basis, but we have made recent changes in response to the ongoing economic impacts of a war in Eastern Europe. In our view, the war itself as well as the sanctions enacted in response could continue to impact the broader European economy, global inflation, and energy prices.

In response, we have made the following changes:

• We have decreased our exposure to international developed market stocks. This primarily consists of European markets, and we want to get out ahead of impacts to these stocks due to dislocation caused by the war.

• We are increasing our exposure to commodities. We have already seen prices for oil, wheat, fertilizer, and industrial metals increase in response to sanctions on Russian exports, and expect this to continue.

While we remain optimistic about the long-term, we know it's stressful to see the impact of this war not just on the people of Ukraine, but also on the value of your investments.

I encourage you to continue to follow the recommendation of my last email and stay invested. The chart above from Blackrock shows how the S&P 500 performed one year after its biggest historical drops, and it shows that recovery has been fairly swift.

I appreciate your trust. Please don't hesitate to reach out to me with any questions.