Good afternoon,
The inaugural Rocket Mortgage Classic PGA Golf Tournament at the Detroit Golf Club is in the books. The first ever PGA tourney held within the city of Detroit proper. The WMR was there 6 days during the week. We volunteered as a walking scorer on 3 of those days and spectated on the other 3. In our admittedly biased opinion, we thought everything went really well. We thought the course and the club looked great. We thought the crowds were large, energetic and having fun. The players seemed to enjoy their time here. The weather even cooperated, thank goodness. The eventual winner of the tournament, Nate Lashley snuck into the field on Wednesday because another player had withdrawn. Lashley was quite literally the last guy into the tournament. The rest of his story is inspiring as well, look it up if you have the interest. He played exceptionally well, won easily and his life will be different from now on. In short, we think the RMC was a success for the city and look forward to it again next year. The only thing that could have been better was if Quicken Loans chief Dan Gilbert had been able to attend. Mr. Gilbert recently suffered a stroke and is still recovering, but the RMC in the D was his brainchild and his passion beginning several years ago. Without him, it never would have happened. Thanks Dan, get well soon.
Here are some anecdotes from our time there last week. In no particular order…
We enjoyed being a walking scorer. It wasn’t as difficult as it was portrayed to be and it was cool being inside the ropes with the pros. We’ll do it again next year.
The pros are generally very nice guys. They introduce themselves at the beginning of each round and hand us a signed golf ball at the end of each round, which is a nice gesture. We gave them to our son. Not to be snooty, but their autograph would be more valuable to us on some new account paperwork, but a golf ball is nice too.
A small handful of the pros aren’t so nice, as we heard that a few of them stiffed our locker room attendants, leaving without tipping the guys for their work during the week. That’s not cool.
The big name guys can’t go anywhere without being mobbed. That has to get old.
During the practice rounds, the guys are friendly and talkative.
During the tournament, they are laser focused and we learned not to speak to them unless they spoke to us.
The fans who ponied up $10,000 to play in the Pro-Am tournament have too much time and too much money.
Most of the spectators are great.
A few of them are not. Yelling inappropriate things and just generally being jerks. The pros ignore them.
Spectating is fun from pretty much anywhere, on the course, from a corporate cabana or whatever, but most especially from inside the ropes with the players.
Walking with a group past a cabana in which your friends are having fun is a unique experience. They begin shouting your name as they see you walk by. Fans of our own, so to speak. Strangers in adjoining cabanas don’t know why they’re yelling, but they begin to look too. One of our pros turned around and gave us a smile as we waved to our crew. Shout out to the Go Team.
Professional golfers, in general, have attractive wives or girlfriends.
The professional caddies are very smart guys and usually excellent golfers themselves. They know exactly where they are on the course at all times and they know exactly how far their guy hits every club in his bag.
The logistics of putting on an event like the RMC is fascinating. There must be a gazillion (that’s the technical term) of items to handle and decisions to make.
And finally, the game that the pros play is nothing like the game that the rest of us play. They are so much better on every level that there really isn’t a comparison to us amateurs.
That’s enough golf talk, let’s get back to the business of the WMR.
The markets have been going up this year and are making new highs. That’s good if you’re a net seller of stocks, but bad if you’re a net buyer of them. The WMR usually advocates buying because that’s how we build wealth and outpace inflation over long periods of time. Should we be worried that the market is too high? Short answer is probably not yet. We don’t pretend to be able to predict pullbacks or market declines but we just don’t see any reason for one any time soon. That doesn’t mean that it won’t happen, and if you’re really concerned about protecting your portfolio, call us for some protection strategies. In the meantime, continue to own shares in the constantly rising dividends of the greatest companies in the world.
What about the economy? We’ve seen some stories recently that the economy really isn’t as good as it appears to be and that we’re headed for a slowdown. We don’t believe that. Here is our favorite economist giving some reasons why things are pretty much ok. That’s not to say that we are without issues of concern, like government spending for example, but the good far outweighs the bad for now.
https://www.ftportfolios.com/Commentary/EconomicResearch/2019/6/24/5-threats-to-prosperity
We attended another CPA conference last week. We had volunteered our managing director to give a talk about life insurance to the CPAs, so we thought it was only fitting that we attend. We know enough about insurance to be dangerous, but not enough to educate the attendees appropriately. Our guy has forgotten more about life insurance than we know, so whenever we have a complex case, we ask him for input. One of the points of his talk was that there are a lot of old policies out there. Policies that were purchased many years ago for various reasons that were appropriate at the time and then placed in a drawer someplace and ignored. They haven’t been serviced, they haven’t been reviewed and the circumstances under which they were purchased are most likely different now. If you have an old policy that should be re-evaluated, please let me know.
LF25 – “If you watch a game, it’s fun. If you play it, it’s recreation. If you work at it, it’s golf.” – Bob Hope
Have a great week and a great 4th of July.
Michael J. Acho, MBA, CFP®
Private Wealth Advisor
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Lincoln Financial Advisors/Sagemark Consulting
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Southfield, MI 48075
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