We wouldn’t call it a scorching Santa Claus rally, but the S&P 500 was able to hang on and post a positive total return of roughly 2.7% in Q4 2025. This put a nice cherry on top of another solid year for US equity investors. In calendar 2025, the S&P 500 recorded a gain of 17.9% to make it three consecutive years of double-digit returns. When coupled with gains of over 25% each in both 2023 and 2024, the S&P 500 has returned more than 86% from its close on December 31, 2022.

The S&P 500 finished November up 0.2%, bringing year to date returns to 17.8% through month end. A flat month on the surface doesn’t quite capture the experience investors lived through, as it took a late-month rally to pull the index back to where it started. Beneath the headline number, some of the year’s high-flying stocks came back down to earth, reflecting a modest rotation under the surface during the pullback. While these week-to-week gyrations make for lively dinner-t

October could best be described as a mixed bag: some good, some bad, but certainly eventful. The month’s headlines and market reactions once again reinforced our Clear Air Turbulence theme, as investors navigated through some spooky developments: renewed government shutdown threats, chatter about stock market “bubbles” and talk of additional tariffs that led to a rather painful single-day sell-off early in the month. Yet, when the dust settled, markets clawed back those losse

The saying “cash is king” has been around for well over 100 years—credited to author George N. McLean—and the maxim still holds true in many scenarios. But is there such a thing as too much cash?

At Rolling Hills Advisors, we require all our clients to maintain a personal balance sheet—an organized summary of the assets they own and the liabilities they owe. While this is a standard requirement for publicly traded companies, many individuals have never taken the time to put it on paper.