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The
Report
Updates and Information for our valued clients
David F. Boothe • President
​
450 Kings Hwy N.E. • Dover, DE 19901
302-734-7526 • aBIGplan.com
April 2025
We talked about cracking eggs to make omelets in our first quarter newsletter. I can’t say we were expecting widespread egging of the stock and bond markets and the toilet papering of people’s portfolios but here we are. I joke about the mischief of teens on a Halloween night but let’s be honest, it feels more like a horror movie. That leads me to my main point, there are two things that drive investors like no other. Corporate earnings? No. Political policies? No.
FEAR and GREED
These are the things that plague investors the most. It causes investors to make the classic mistakes of buying high and selling low. Rather than look at the market like they look at every other purchase they make, investors look at it completely backwards. If you need a new shirt or blouse and walk into a store that has clothing marked up 150%, you walk out with no new shirt. Walk into a store that’s half off and you walk out with four shirts, two of which you will probably never wear. But when it comes to the market, everyone wants to buy when it’s up 150% and they run out of the store screaming when it’s half off.
We don’t succumb to fear or greed.
As stated in our last newsletter, we didn’t trust the U.S. stock market coming into 2025 because it was simply too expensive. While many market pundits were predicting 15% to 20% gains for 2025, we weren’t convinced. On January 3rd, we pulled significant money out of the U.S. stock market and redeployed it into Europe, Southeast Asia and bonds. Those changes helped us achieve a positive return through March while the market was negative. Then a key market indicator was broken at the close of business on March 31st. This indicator is our objective RED LINE and when crossed, we take dramatic measures to become more defensive. We raised up to 24% of cash for our clients on April 1st, just a few days before the historic market crash we currently find ourselves in.
WHEW! We hid under the bed right before Jason, Michael Myers or Freddy Krueger… walked into the room. (No, I’m not a horror movie buff and have never seen any of those movies but I do try to keep up with pop culture)
The point is this: we utilize objective levels and indicators to make decisions, stripping away the two emotions that cause the most damage to individual investors, FEAR AND GREED. We sell and trim positions when we’re up big, raise lots of cash when the market warns us of trouble and then start buying when markets crash.
With the market down 20% from its highs, we’ve begun small, disciplined and targeted buying while others are fearful and selling. BUY LOW/ SELL HIGH. Take the opposite stance of everyone’s Fear and Greed. So, the good news is that you’re holding up great in the face of all this chaos but what lies ahead?
First, we support all the issues the Trump administration is trying to tackle. Our government is bloated, our country is literally broke, and we are being taken advantage of by our trading partners. But the execution of the fix? Not so much! There’s a lot of extreme and reckless gambling taking place to address these issues. From Mickey Mouse math on “reciprocal tariffs” to deporting a legal migrant dad to an El Salvador prison, to having to hire back critical employees that were fired from their federal positions two day earlier. The execution is poor and leads to extreme uncertainty. Guess what the market hates more than anything…
UNCERTAINTY. Give it good news, give it bad news but whatever you do, don’t leave the market guessing.
The market is guessing.
As someone that leads the management of hundreds of millions of dollars of people’s life savings, I can attest that the paralysis of uncertainty is real. When you have no clue as to what tomorrow holds in terms of significant policy decisions, it’s difficult to navigate the road ahead. That’s why we don’t rely on our emotions but instead rely on objective market levels and data to make decisions. In all honesty, with the market down 20% from its highs, we could easily make the decision to put all of the cash into high quality stocks knowing with 99.9% certainty that it’s a screaming successful buy when looking out 3 to 5 years from now. The problem is that we have to keep our clients in the game between now and then and there’s something that gets in the way. FEAR. Because of this, we work hard to find the balance between managing your fear while doing what most people don’t have the courage to do, BUY LOW.
At this point, it looks to us like we’re in a full-fledged Bear Market. We had been warning of a pending recession, one that we thought the post-election market rally had delayed until 2026, but we now believe it is highly likely to come in the coming months. We put the odds at 80%. A lot of damage to both corporate and consumer confidence on top of an already weakening economy has put the risk for recession very high even if there’s a dramatic change in policy. If a recession ensues, and that’s a big IF, the market is likely only halfway down to its final destination.
With all of that said, we have a plan. We are sitting on lots of cash, have a list of very attractive investments we want to buy and have high quality existing investments of which we want to buy more. We’ll be doing this incrementally on the way down to that “final destination”. If the market stops short of how low we think it could go, we’ll have done some buying at very low levels. And if we get lucky enough for it to go all the way down to where we believe it can go, WOW! How exciting! Seriously! Don’t be afraid! The greatest fortunes are made when investors have cash and buy low. We have the cash and we will buy if markets go lower.
We’ve seen multiple once in a lifetime events over the last 25 years. The 2000 Tech Crash, 9/11, Great Recession of 08/09, U.S. Debt Downgrade, European Debt Crisis, Brexit, COVID Pandemic, 2022 Hyper-Inflation and now tariffs that are the highest they’ve ever been since the Smoot-Hartley tariffs of 1930 (they didn’t go well). We know what to do and we’ll do it. It’s not all going to zero… if it does, money will be the least of your worries and in that case, we would highly recommend Jesus as we would expect Him to be on the way.
Let me address one more thing that I believe to be one of the biggest myths in personal finance. “But I don’t have time for it to come back”. Unless you have a specific purchase to make in the next 12 to 36 months, you have all the time in the world. You can be retired and have a bear market without having to change anything if you’re invested appropriately and you are invested appropriately at B.I.G.
Although not a horror movie aficionado, I know the person that panics by running through the dark always gets killed in the end. Just hang tight, stay put, it will all be okay.
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David F. Boothe
​President, Chief Investment Officer
Boothe Investment Group Inc. (“B.I.G. Investment Services”) is a registered investment adviser offering advisory services in the State(s) of DE, FL, MD, NC, PA, TX, VA and in other jurisdictions where exempted. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Opinions expressed herein are solely those of B.I.G. Investment Services, unless otherwise specifically cited. Material presented is believed to be from reliable sources and no representations are made by our firm as to another parties’ informational accuracy or completeness. All investing involves risk, including the potential for loss of principal. There is no guarantee that any investment plan or strategy will be successful.