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It is no secret that the typical American is working long hours with little respite compared to other countries with large economies. Full-time employees report an average work week of 47 hours and four out of 10 American workers say they work over 50 hours a week.

Do you love the holidays, spending thousands of dollars on holiday gifts, lights, entertaining, food and decorations each year? If so, you’re not alone. Many Americans feel the sting of holiday spending well into the New Year.

We feel that the following letter from LPL’s Chief Investment Officer Burt White appropriately captures our thoughts on last night’s election result.  

Burt White Election letter

For much of this year many of you have offered to us in meetings your thoughts on the upcoming election, and on many occasions we have shared laughs about the riotous nature of this cycle’s electoral process.

Life is full of risks and people make decisions every day that require weighing those risks against their ability to protect themselves using their own resources or by transferring the risk to an insurance company. Most people realize that they couldn’t afford to rebuild a damaged home or buy a new car without insurance.

It’s a presidential election year and with that comes the invariable stock market prognosticators seeking to predict election results or forecast the market’s direction. On one hand, the performance of the stock market during the two months leading up to the election has been somewhat of a predictor of who will win the race.

Businesses of all types are taking advantage of the enormous potential of social networking sites for business development, customer communications and public relations. The largest networking site, Facebook, has over 1.6 billion users which present a business with a significant opportunity to expand its reach to target markets beyond what the traditional marketing strategies can accomplish.

After several years of wallowing in financial upheaval caused by a severe recession and financial crisis, Americans are, once again, looking to the future. A renewed confidence has many people setting their sights on long term goals that, just a few years ago, may have seemed out of reach.

We are writing to inform you that in our target portfolios we have replaced the Scout Mid Cap Fund with iShares Core Mid Cap, a low cost indexed approach. Please note that this is not a performance-driven change as Scout has stellar long term numbers and has outperformed its benchmark so far this year.

By now you have probably seen that the citizens of the United Kingdom have voted to leave the European Union, otherwise known as the “Brexit”. This news has sent shock waves throughout the world and the markets as global leaders and investors alike grapple with how this news will affect all of us in the short and long term.