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Ever wonder what happened to the annual Social Security statement you used to get in the mail?

The Social Security administration stopped sending them in 2011 to save about $70 million/year.

Social security is a nice supplement for many Americans and a critical source of retirement income for millions. Your benefits should be considered when planning for retirement.

The recovery continues.

After a small dip to start April, markets mostly went up and to the right. Very little resistance was offered to the point where the bears started beating their chests again about valuations and a long overdue correction in equities. We didn’t get much from stocks in the first quarter so it was nice to make progress this quarter.

Pretty much every time I talk with a client these days they tell me about how so and so on TV, on-line or in the paper is sure the market is due for a correction.

How do they know? Can they predict the future? Will averages, or valuations or indicators that have been right some percentage of the time in the past be right again?

We did get a dip in markets the second half of January (still positive returns for the quarter), but we didn’t break the general pattern the market has been following since late summer of 2011.

U.S. markets finished Q4 and 2013 on a high.

The S&P 500 rose a bit over 32% in 2013, the best annual return since 1997. The best U.S. stock fund we own rose over 43% while our best international stock fund was also up over 32%.

The big news for the 3rd quarter of 2013 was a historic move in interest rates as the market anticipated the Fed would start tapering stimulus bond buying.  Bonds got dumped across the globe causing prices to drop and yields to rise.

The big news in the markets for the quarter was the huge move higher for interest rates. Interest rates experienced the biggest move since April of 1987.