I hope everyone is well and that life is treating you good. It looks like the weather is finally going to stay nice, and it's time to hit the lake! We'd like to wish all the moms out there an early happy Mother's Day! What in the heck would we do if we did not have all the moms and wives out there holding down the fort? Like always, things are always changing here at JDS Wealth Management, and our teams of financial professionals continue to bring on new opportunities, as well as updates on previous strategies. Recently, Global Financial Private Capital (our institutional money management team), has introduced us to various new investment strategies and money managers as part of their "2015 Enhanced Investment Platform". We can now offer "socially responsible" strategies, "enhanced hedging" strategies for both up and down markets, and "The Family Endowment Series". Endowments are one of the most popular means by which large institutions achieve stated goals with their investment funds. College endowments also use these strategies with great success, and hire very skilled financial individuals to manage these funds. The Family Endowment model uses modern methods and investment types to bring this highly successful, large endowment approach to the individual investor. The investment world has evolved; the Family Endowment model takes advantage of many of these advances. If anyone is interested in learning more about these updated strategies, just give us a call or shoot us an email. We'd be happy to sit down with you and discuss in more detail. It may be a good time to start "hedging" against market decline and volatility. Enjoy this month's thought for the week and the Lake Norman Magazine article. Don't forget to listen to "The Safe Harbor Retirement Planning Show" on WSIC 1400AM & 100.7FM every Saturday morning at 10am and Wednesday morning at 8am. Also visit our website, because there's tons of good stuff you can check out. Until next month, James Stillman |