An Investment Outlook from GDS: Reflecting on 2024 and Beyond

Our GDS Wealth Management team is happy to report on another productive year.

Our GDS Wealth Management team is happy to report on another productive year.

Our financial plans and investment portfolios continue to be driven by our desire to help you, our valued clients, reach your financial goals. Rather than responding in haste to current market or economic trends, we remain steadfast in our commitment to our existing plans—this will continue to be the case in 2025 and into the future.

As we reflect on all that the past year has brought and all that is to come in 2025, it’s important to remember some of our core beliefs and investment outlooks here at GDS.

Above anything else, we are focused on long-term goals and thoughtful planning. We believe strongly in the value of broadly diversified portfolios and invest in stocks we believe in.

We understand that it is not possible to consistently predict or time the markets with accuracy. The only practical way to take advantage of long-term positive returns, we believe, is to ride out the frequent—but historically temporary—periods of decline.

As financial advisers, we do not react to current economic events. If your long-term goals have not changed, our plan to achieve those will not either.

Now, as we review the events of 2024 we can see that the market was overwhelmingly powered by a few select large technology stocks (the Magnificent Seven). Investors who were broadly diversified—a stance we position our clients to take—had a particularly good year. There is evidence that the market will continue to broaden, which would certainly be welcome in 2025.

The overall economic environment and job market have remained fairly strong, although the job market is beginning to cool in light of new policies. Corporate earnings reached groundbreaking highs, and financial analysts predict that they will continue to rise in 2025.

In light of stretched valuations, some investors began to speculate that the stock market had gotten ahead of itself. We believe that valuations are no more reliable than any other tool to time the market, we stuck to our existing plans and encouraged our clients to do the same.

We expect that the stock market will not continue to indefinitely compound at its recent rates. But we don’t need it to. Each of the major benchmark indexes ended the year higher, and we expect 2025 to perform strong for our clients.

There was a slight downtick in the market after Federal Reserve Chair Powell remarked that inflation was not going away. Although predictable, the response to this news was not favorable.

However, despite this—and the overall unfortunate state of the United States’ fiscal condition—the average consumer is doing quite well. The household debt service ratio, which calculates debt payments as a percentage of disposable personal income, hit a near 40-year low and fell to 10.1%.

On behalf of our entire GDS Wealth Management team, we want to wish you happiness and prosperity in this new year. Our team is always here to answer any questions or concerns you may have. Thank you for trusting us to be your financial adviser. It’s an honor to serve you.