By Tim Russell, President & Wealth Manager at Life Financial Group
Originally shared on the Life in the Markets podcast — 05/12/2025

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Welcome to Life in the Markets. My name is Tim Russell, and today is May 12, 2025.

Last week in the markets, there really wasn’t much of anything happening. It was lower volatility, lower returns. Actually, the market was down a fraction of a percent.

Interestingly though, the equal-weighted market index did well—it actually grew last week. Don’t make anything of that per se. It’s just an interesting note to pay attention to.

What’s Driving the Market This Week?

Things that are driving the market right now: it looks like there’s a lot of excitement about a potential deal with Great Britain on trade. There are some interesting economic items coming out. Again, nothing is set in stone. These are just little data points along the way that may indicate that the worst may not yet either be here—or may not yet happen.

Our base case is that the economy, at least, is going to continue to do well once we get through some of the uncertainty around tariffs and all of these negotiations that are going on.

Looking Ahead

As far as just basic things to look forward to in the week ahead, we’ll continue to watch markets and earnings. Things have been shaping up fairly well in spite of all of the uncertainty, in spite of the tariffs, in spite of the inflation concerns. We’ll be very interested to see how the rest of this week shapes up.

The Heart of Investing

As far as investing goes, I want to keep your eye on what exactly it is that we’re doing when we’re investing.

When we invest in a company, we’re not doing something like buying gold. Buying gold means owning a simple commodity that does nothing. When you own a company, you put your money into the operations of that company. Obviously, you’re not giving it directly to the company—you’re buying those shares from someone else—but it’s creating liquidity, which does have a bottom-line impact on a company’s financial health.

We’re investing in companies to help do good things, to help the world become a better place, Lord willing. And that’s, frankly, why I’m really excited about investing.

So keep on remembering, as we go through interesting or rough patches within the markets, we’re investing in companies that are trying to make the world a better place and provide products and services that are going to help humanity flourish.

Stewardship Verse of the Day

Just a quick verse—our stewardship verse of the day comes from Hebrews 13:5:

“Keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have, for He has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’”

These are verses that we can take to the bank. These are verses that we can build our investing lives upon.

If we build our investing lives upon just the pure accumulation of wealth and assets, Paul calls these uncertain riches. But when we keep our life free from the love of money—when we have a rock-solid confidence that God will provide for all of our needs, that He will never leave us or forsake us—we’re in a great place to enter into uncertainty and unknowns, trusting the God who knows the future and has all of the outcomes in His hand.

Closing Thoughts

We want to thank you for joining us today. Remember to order your copy of The Good Steward, our book that was released just this last month. I would encourage you to purchase it, read it, and share it with a friend.

It is now out on Audible as well, so I highly encourage you to pick it up there.

Take care. God bless. We’ll see you next week. Be safe in the markets.

 

 

The topics discussed in this blog are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific investment advice or recommendations. Investing and investment strategies involve risk, including the potential loss of principal. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Securities and advisory services are offered through Genios Wealth Management, member FINRA and SIPC.