This week marks forty years since I began my career in Baltimore in the summer of 1986. I find myself feeling nostalgic about the professional journey.
My career path has been anything but predictable. In retrospect, some of the sharp turns are nearly unexplainable. I moved through banking, corporate tax, equipment finance, commercial banking, trust and investments, agribusiness financial planning and, ultimately, independent wealth management.
There was no carefully drawn roadmap. I changed industries, functions and professional identities several times, with most of those turns occurring before I turned forty.
Along the way, I earned my CPA, completed a master’s degree and became a CFP® many moons ago.
What once seemed like disconnected experiences eventually turned out to be preparation. Each stop added a skill, new perspective or relationship that became useful later. In the second half of my career, those experiences came together to build a thriving wealth-management business alongside our outstanding team at Harvest Rock Advisors.
This milestone has me feeling both old and grateful. I was a middle-class kid who had the opportunity to attend college, earn professional credentials, reinvent himself and eventually build his own business from the ground up.
I remain deeply grateful to have lived in a country where that kind of opportunity is possible.
Three life lessons stand out to me. Allow me share them for the three readers under the age of thirty reading this blog:
1) Keep searching until you find work that you truly enjoy and actually look forward to Monday mornings.
2) Manage your career proactively. Do not index-fund your career; commit to continuous self-improvement and learning.
3) It is not what happens to you at work that matters most; it is what you do next.
Since I’m not going out to pasture anytime soon, time to get to back to work reviewing the investment climate the back half of 2026.
This summer has been a challenging period to deploy fresh investable cash into risk assets. Stocks sit richly valued and bonds are at an inflection point as interest rates gyrate in the dog days of summer 2026.
After getting punched in the mouth by the Iranian War in March, global stocks stormed back in 2Q26, setting multiple record highs based on investor enthusiasm for AI chip makers.
The good news is the robust stock market performance in 1H26 was driven more by the “E” (earnings) than the “P” (valuation). Earnings growth in 2Q26 has been solid so far across multiple sectors, which offset a dip in valuation multiples. Rising stock returns driven by earnings growth is a doubly satisfying outcome.
I heard a great quip recently about how the big semiconductor firms are “doing business with themselves” using circular financing arrangements with their customers to maintain stock momentum.
Perhaps NVIDIA and its AI ecosystem peers really are the only companies in the world capable of producing enough computer chips to run data centers, with stellar profits to run for decades - with or without circular financing deals. This old warhorse has witnessed the “this time is different” technology spectacle before; it never ends quite that way.
We do foresee respectable US economic growth in 2H26, propelled by the 2025 tax law, epic AI spending by the hyper-scalers, productivity gains (AI inspired), good corporate earnings and more freewheeling spending by Baby Boomers and the US government.
At least Boomers are spending their children’s inheritance and not going into deep debt to support the spending frenzy, unlike our reckless federal government.
It appears the US will add another $2 trillion to the national debt for the fiscal year ending September 2026. Massive government deficits, tariffs, an oil spike, war-related supply shocks and AI spending are all inflationary and the bond market is signaling concern over it.
As I often say, tell me the ten-year Treasury bond yield a year from now and I can give you a decent stock and market forecast. One does wonder how the new regime at the Fed Reserve can bridle so many inflation pressures at once via policy changes.
My bet is they can’t, with no Fed Fund interest rate cuts coming in 2026 due to stiffening inflation winds. The yield curve is steepening, which suggests keeping bond duration short (er) and waiting for an opportunity to lock in higher fixed interest rate yields down the road.
Small stocks and real estate abhor high interest rates so they could be challenged in 2H26. Longer term, each sector remains attractively cheap, but their revitalization may be on hold until this interest rate cycle ends.
Foreign equities remain selectively interesting. Geopolitics and an unpredictable US dollar add more than normal volatility to this asset class right now.
Gold and silver each hit a wall in the spring after their epic runup in value. Given the inflation and geopolitical risks, their next big move would seem to be higher, right? Real assets, specifically metals and commodities, are interesting right now, especially if actively managed.
Oil is the wild card. If the Iranian war escalates meaningfully from here, drop all market forecasts in the trash can.
In closing, stay invested but selectively. That is the watchword heading into what should be an interesting finish to 2026.
Until next time, be well…Tim