Hello. My name is Chad Taylor, managing partner with MDT Financial Advisors here in Houston, Texas. I just wanted to do kind of a quick update on a few things and tell you a story of something I learned this weekend.

                Last week, equities finally halted a three week slide. This is really about the third time that this has gone on. It happened in March, it happened in May, and it happened again last week. The S&P 500 was up 5 to 6% while the NASDAQ was up 6 to 7%, and the Dow Jones was up 4 to 5%. That still leaves the S&P 500 on track for the worst six months to begin a year since 1970, so things are still not great in the markets. Treasuries and defensive stocks did slightly better, but bonds have still had a pretty rough year, as rough as I've seen it in my career over the last 25 years. Markets were helped by a decline in broader commodities, because it added some hope that we may have seen peak inflation. We'll see in the next few weeks to months, if that's true or not, but a lot of bad news has been priced into the market, but we're just not sure if we've seen the worst of it yet. No one really knows for sure. And it's very hard to kind of get in and get out of markets, making it worthwhile to do that. So if you need cash short term, making some changes might be the right thing to do, or if you're getting very nervous, let's discuss your asset allocation.

                If your plan, though, is in place and your investment portfolio plan is set for that plan, holding steady might be the best thing to do, but it never hurts to have a conversation and so even if we just had your six month strategy and review meeting and you want to reach back out and go over some of that or see what this has done, please let us know. We can always move those forward and have those conversations, which I've always found the best thing to do when we're in one of these bad markets.

                Now, one of the things that I did learn this week, so Jennifer and I, my wife and I, were taking Madison, our daughter, to Cincinnati over the weekend. Madison's going to be doing a ballet intensive for quite a bit of this summer and so we decided to make a road trip of it so that we could drive a car up there, so Jennifer's going to stay with Madison and so that they would have a car while they were in Cincinnati. The three of us took off and I was just planning on flying back after the weekend to come back.

                We take off leaving Houston and we hit Hope, Arkansas when we pulled over to get gas and I reached in my back pocket to get my wallet and I couldn't find it. It wasn't in the car, I didn't know if I'd dropped it. Ultimately, I just forgot it at the house that morning. I guess I was busy and just forgot it. The first thing that comes to my mind is, "Oh my gosh, I don't have an ID. How am I going to get on the plane?" We called the airlines and they, they made me feel better. They said, "Yes, it happens. Just make sure and get to the airport early, go through security, and tell them you don't have your ID." And so I did. We got there early. They couldn't have been more helpful. Basically they said, "This does happen." I had a copy of my passport, but they said that they could have verified me with just looking at the settings on my phone, where they looked to see my name, to make sure it matched the reservation. They said it could have been a prescription bottle or a health insurance card, just something, a credit card, something that shows your name that they could verify.

                They verified me, they got me through, they did have to search the bag and do all the screening of the bag probably a little more than they normally would, but it really didn't add that much time getting through security. I was really surprised after stressing about it for about 24 hours wondering if I'm going to be able to get on the flight or if I'm going to have to have someone get into my house and send my ID to me, but it all worked out. Just know if you forget your ID, lose your ID, you can get on a plane to get back or at least I could from Cincinnati.

I hope you have a great day. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. We're always here to help. Thank you.