The Investment Team is back with our 20th episode of Tandem Talk—this time with something completely different! Episode 20 marks five years of conversations around the table. If you’ve tuned in since the beginning, we thank you for your listenership and for bearing with us as we figured this whole podcast thing out (no more hour-long episodes!). In this episode, we dive into our mission here at Tandem – helping to keep clients invested through all markets, by providing a more consistent, more repeatable, and less volatile investment experience.

We’re back with Episode 19 of Tandem Talk – for having nothing to say, we sure do have a lot to talk about! Tune in as we discuss the unprecedented levels of market narrowness and overconcentration investors are faced with today. What has happened to the S&P 500? Are markets changed forever? Is it really different “this time”? If history (or probability) is any indication, it’s not. Later, we revisit the “Lost Decade” of the aughts, and recount lessons learned. The takeaway is quite simple: if you invest like everyone else, during boom times you will boom, and during bust expect to bust. But hard times in the index does not mean hard times for all stocks, or all investors either.

With the election now behind us, we evaluate where we are and where we go from here. With recent rumblings of a flat index projected for the next decade, we remind the listener the importance of owning good individual businesses. If you own individual companies with a proven ability to consistently grow their earnings, sales, cash flow and dividends (if paid), it matters far less what the index will do. Remember, just because the index could be flat, doesn’t mean that everything in it will be.

Special note: Tandem recorded this on Veteran’s Day (11/11/2024), therefore, we would like to acknowledge those who have served and are serving our country – thank you for your service!