And that's a wrap for the first half of the year, and the results are in. Stocks are (much) higher than they were at the beginning of the year. How did you do? I have no idea how you did, here's what the market delivered investors:

Everyone writing or speaking has an agenda. What about you, Robert, I hear you ask? Of course, I do too. As much as I love reading and writing about markets, I want to help investors think differently about what they're being told and what is going on in markets. And if someone needs help with the management of their wealth, I want to them speak with us. Yes there is a love of markets, and there is a love of brand awareness too. Now that we've got that out of the way, let's get into it.

Followers and readers would know my wife and I put our property up on the market back in August of 2022. If you missed my blog post the auction, you can read it here.

My son played his first soccer game over the weekend. He's playing under 9's for a local club. It was so amazing for me to watch his first game. I had a smile on my face for the entire 40 minutes. Not all the parents shared this feeling. There was a lot of criticism from the sidelines. For the avoidance of any doubt, this was not the EPL, it was an under 9's team who is playing together for the first time. The good news is they're learning, they will continue to improve, and they had a lot of fun. The bad news is that they got smashed, 10 to 1 or something like that. It doesn't matter. What happened, happened.

I've been talking about this for sometime - the consumer, and their "hunch" for what is yet to come. Yet they've been consistently wrong for a long period of time. What you think should happen and what actually happens can be two very different things. Sure, you might be right evetually, but the real questions is not whether you were right or wrong, but how much money did you lose or forgo in the interim.

I came across this chart last week, and on Friday night a friend of mine also sent it through to me and asked whether there was any similar analysis for Australia. I told him I would look into it over the weekend.