FINANCE: Strategies for investing through a recession

By David R. Guttery, RFC, RFS, CAM President, Keystone Financial Group-Trussville, AL

First, let me just say that every wealth management plan is implemented with guardrails that are unique to the client. These guardrails address limits and tolerances for risk, and codify such things as objectives, and the time with which we have to achieve those objectives. There is no uniform, one-size-fits-all solution to investing through strange and unique periods of time. Whether we are in a recession or not, one universal truth still holds, and that is investment portfolios that are used to implement holistic wealth management plans, should be individualized, and reflect the unique characteristics of the client.

So, these thoughts are at a very high level. 

I have drawn reference to this graphic within previous articles. It is the economic cycle.

I have encouraged people to think of it in terms of changing seasons. Imagine how your behavior is incentivized by what you feel. As we move from left to right on this chart, and the seasons change from spring, to summer, to fall, to winter, and then back to spring, think about how that incentivizes your choice of clothing. During the summer, you’re wearing short sleeve shirts. During the winter, you’re wearing jackets. Clearly, as evidenced by economic metrics to which we drew reference within our last article, we are in the winter season of this cycle. 

Therefore, the jackets that we are wearing consist of…