Sometimes the most important reaction to a new, bad idea is “just say no.”[1] A subtle variation on that theme is evolving now at the US Department of Labor (DOL). On March 30, 2026, the DOL released its long-awaited proposed regulation entitled “Fiduciary Duties in Selecting Designated Investment Alternatives” in response to President Trump’s Executive Order that calls for expanded access to private equity and other alternative investments for 401(k) plans and their participants.”[2] However, “the proposed rule offers an expansive view of fiduciary prudence under ERISA with respect to the selection of any designated investment alternative, which is consistent with DOL’s historically neutral posture that neither favors nor disfavors any particular type of investment or investment strategy.”[3]

Great stocks don’t perform every year and an underperforming year isn’t a good reason to sell one. When a stock goes down, investors often assume something must be wrong with the company operationally, but that isn’t necessarily so. Investors can get obsessed with short-term issues that are readily resolved within a year. Stock prices should be related to the long-term value of the company, but investors can get distracted, swaying market values.

The S&P 500 declined 4.3% in the first quarter of 2026, driven primarily by the outbreak of the war in Iran and the resulting surge in oil prices. A less obvious but meaningful contributor to the decline was the historic collapse in software industry stocks. Software stocks in the S&P 500 fell 23.9% in Q1 and underperformed the index by the most in decades (see Figure 1 - next page).[1] The software selloff began last fall and accelerated early this year with the release of agentic artificial intelligence (AI) software coding tools.[2] The central issue is that AI may threaten the profit margins and business models of many software companies by enabling customers to build their own software. AI continues to be a driving force for the economy and for markets driven by data center capital expenditure and the monetization of agentic AI. However, we must consider which companies and industries are most vulnerable to disruption and which are positioned to be beneficiaries.

Is there a more bullish condition than a stock price or an index price breaking out to all-time high ground on an absolute price basis?

The threats facing individuals in the financial world have grown more sophisticated—and more personal—than ever before.

A recent article on the use of disclaimers caught our attention.[1] The tightened rules for inherited IRAs make disclaimers a potentially useful tool. “A disclaimer is a legal document in which someone renounces an asset that was set to be inherited.”[2] As the article points out some “retirees and pre-retirees have traditional IRAs far larger than they expected.” The tightened rules require the inheritor to recognize ordinary income from the IRA over ten years. If the IRA not only lists a primary beneficiary but also contingent or secondary beneficiaries, then a disclaimer may prove useful for family tax planning by moving family income to members with lower tax rates.

At the end of 2024, “global household wealth surged again to a record $310 trillion.” “North America still commands about half of all global household financial assets and more than half of asset growth in 2024.” The value of US stock markets was approximately $64 trillion at the end of 2025. Of course, “households” own only a part of that. Woodstock deals almost exclusively with households, so that is our focus.

Obesity and diabetes are serious metabolic diseases with pronounced comorbidities that have substantial personal and economic costs. The latter include the untoward downstream consequences of heart disease and a host of chronic diseases. All these contribute to higher rates of early mortality and high benefits expenses as well as reduced economic productivity.

The US economy continues to be resilient! Inflation has moderated from its highs but is sticking in the upper 2’s. Unemployment is creeping up but still healthy from a historical perspective—50,000 monthly job adds is the new breakeven number. And gross domestic product (GDP) is unequivocally strong, reaccelerating in the back half of 2025. The stock market is humming along; any dips get filled, quickly. The S&P 500 was up 86% cumulatively between 2023 and 2025. Another low double-digit increase in 2026 and the market will have doubled in four years! So, there’s ample reason to be bullish on US equities, in part due to the macro numbers but primarily because of the enormous potential of emerging technologies.

What makes Woodstock work well? In my view, there are five principal factors which make Woodstock’s investment management proposition unique. This may sound familiar, but foremost it is our people and their service orientation. Clients and portfolio managers get a high level of support from our sister company, Woodstock Services. They are responsive to customer questions and requests, and navigate the bureaucracy, enabling our portfolio managers to focus on more complex client issues, stock analysis, and portfolio maintenance.