If you're alive, if you've got a pulse, read the news, or looked at the credit card statement - you know that interest rates have come up. Long-term rates are up, short-term rates are up. This has caused all sorts of distress and it's interesting.

Last week I came back from a great vacation to Greece, and of course, I always leave with a reading list. And in that list was an interesting book called The Missing Billionaires by Victor Haghani.

The term "soft landings" has been echoing frequently in recent news. However, the irony lies in the fact that the more we hear about it, the less likely it seems we'll experience one. Today, I aim to shed light on some of the pressing market concerns and their potential implications.

  We call September storm season here at Avion. I'm going to tell you why. The September Effect For at least 100 years now, September's been the worst month of the year for the market. Since 1928, it's been down 52 times. In fact, its ratio of down years to up years is 60/40. 60% of the time you'll lose money in September. There's even a term for this. It's called the "September Effect". So, this year we had a couple of  hidden factors. Through August, we had this AI driving rally. Any stock with AI related to it really did well. There's been a bit of a pullback, and towards the end of September, it really began to sink in that the era of free money is over. Globally, stocks pulled back a little bit as a result of that realization. That could be fairly permanent. The good news…

  Like many people, I have been involved in a number of renovation projects in the last three or four years. And I have paid tuition like never before. So the purpose of this video is to maybe help you pay a little less tuition than I did. I read a fascinating article in the Financial Times that really talked about how renovation projects are becoming a disaster for people. It would've been nice to read this article three or four years ago. But what we're seeing both with our clients, ad hoc conversation with others, and even personal experiences within our office is the world has changed. It used to be if you couldn't afford it the way it is, buy what you can afford, fix it up. That could be a house, a plane, a classic car, a boat. But the rules of the game are changing. Labor…

If you’re a business owner who is contemplating selling your business, you can learn valuable tips and avoidable traps in this interview with our founder and CEO Paul Carroll who was a guest on the Failing to Success podcast. In this discussion, you’ll hear how Paul’s prior experience, both in aviation and the financial sector, sparked his desire to build his own wealth management firm dedicated to helping successful growth-minded business leaders. Paul shares insights about how to maximize the value of your business that he’s learned hands-on from more than two decades of leading Avion Wealth and through serving as a wealth manager advising business owners on their exit strategies. He reveals specific tips on how to treat personal expenses, what it means to have "clean books," and why it may make sense to pay more taxes now for a bigger payout later. Paul walks through real life examples…

  So the debt ceiling fiasco is behind us, but are we facing a debt Armageddon? To me it was fairly clear that it was unlikely the Republicans would take this too far, because previously when they did that, it hurt them at the elections. However, they were able to squeeze an effect of 12-month freeze in the growth of spending. But why not more? Why is this such a difficult problem? As a quick summary, there are three types of spending. There's mandatory spending, discretionary spending, and interest on the debt. You could add a fourth type, and we call that tax code spending. Mandatory spending is two-thirds of the budget. It is written in the law. Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, it's untouchable. Discretionary spending is 23%. One half of that goes to the military, and these are uncertain times. The remaining that's discretionary is 11% of the budget.…

  The economy is not broken, but what can go wrong? This is not a Pollyanna video. There are real threats to talk about, but usually they're not the threats that people are thinking of. In the last video we discussed the extraordinary performance of the United States economy relative to the rest of the world. But there are things that can go wrong, and particularly, there are five things that cause economists and policy wonks the most concern. Current Threats to the Economy Immigration is Good for the Economy Number one, immigration. It is without a doubt the key to American exceptionalism. If you look at the S&P 500, the founders of those companies that make up the S&P 500, 45% were either immigrants or the children of immigrants. Economic migrants come to the United States with an ability to take risks, a sense of adventure, and a willingness…

  Is the Economy Bad or Good? Everybody seems to agree that the economy is broken. Why? And more relevantly, why might they be wrong? As we know, Trump promised to make America great again, and Biden is spending $2 trillion to build back better. Despite the fact that 80% of the population are expressing concern for their or their children's future, what we see when we look at the numbers relative to the rest of the world, is that the United States’ economy is a stunning success. GDP I'll give you an example. America is the world's richest, most productive, and innovative country. Let's look at China. China has grown phenomenally since the 1990s. Back in 1990, the United States was 25% of global GDP. Despite China's phenomenal growth, the United States still is at 25% of GDP. In fact, back in 1990, the G7, supposedly the biggest economies…

  For years, we've preached “stay short-term on your bonds”, but today's the inflection point where the interest rate risk we've worried about is now offset by reinvestment risk. So, what is reinvestment risk? For the past few years, we've preached short-term bonds and inflation-protected bonds. Today, the Vanguard Ultra Short-Term Bond ETF has a forward yield of 5%. That's tough to beat. The Fed is expected to raise interest rates by a quarter percent within the next 24 hours, so by the time you're reading this, it may already have happened. There's an 89% probability. We're going to assume it's going to happen. What is Reinvestment Risk? Yesterday's trap was long maturity bonds with higher yields. A lot of broker dealers sold a lot of elderly people a lot of long bonds, and they got crucified when interest rates went up. Yes, they continued to get that three, 4%…