Happy Independence Day!

With the first half of 2017 in the books, let's look at some of the returns from different areas of the global markets through last Friday.

The U.S. market performed well, quietly returning a solid 9.3% for the S&P 500. All major stock indexes were positive while small company stocks, and those with a "value" orientation, lagged during the first half. Large company "growth" stocks, and specifically tech stocks, took off before coming back to earth a bit near the end of the quarter.

The investment management and financial planning business is endlessly fascinating. Every day is full of news stories, research and analysis, and data, always more data. Some of the more interesting data has to do with monitoring how folks across the country are investing their hard-earned savings. Firms like Morningstar and the Investment Company Institute track purchases and sales of mutual funds and exchange traded funds (ETFs). This "fund flows" data is extremely interesting to follow.

One of the many aspects I love about my profession is that I'm required to do continuing education on an ongoing basis. As a Certified Financial Planner, I need to do a minimum of 30 hours every two years and as a NAPFA member I'm required to do 60 hours. These two groups each require a 2-hr ethics course as well. I typically go well beyond these requirements because there's so much to learn and stay engaged with.

Sometimes on a road trip I enjoy scanning through local radio stations as I pass through different areas. It's usually the same old stuff, but sometimes I catch something new. This past Saturday morning I was heading out to volunteer at the Western State Endurance Run. You might have heard of this famous race. It's all on rugged trails up over mountains and down into canyons for 100 miles from Squaw Valley down to Auburn. I hope to run this race someday. It's hard to get into so, until I do, I get to enjoy volunteering instead.

The Federal Reserve meets this week and is expected to raise interest rates again. If they do, this will mark the third increase since December 2015, when the Fed raised rates following seven years at near-zero coming out of the Financial Crisis. An increase this week would likely bring short-term rates to 1-1.25%.

The last time the Fed embarked on a series of rate hikes was about this time in June 2004. Starting then, and over the next two years, short-term rates were steadily raised 17 times, adding 4.25% to what at the time had been 1% short-term rates. Rates stayed static until the fall of 2007, when the Fed began lowering rates more and more aggressively responding to what would become the Great Recession.

At the risk of being redundant, I am a fiduciary when we work together. Among other things, this means that I am legally required to put your interests ahead of my own and I must disclose any material conflicts of interest in our relationship. Additionally, I'm also fee-only, which means that I work directly for you and not a brokerage firm or some other third party. I know many of you are already aware of this, but there are two reasons I wanted to reiterate and I figure this is a good forum to do so.