By Kyle Tetting
You’re in the right place. I’ll spare you the “The Outer Limits” quotes about not adjusting your television set, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out the obvious changes to our website. For the third time in my tenure at Landaas & Company, we’ve embarked on what I consider meaningfully positive improvements to the look and function of our website.
While I run the risk of boring you with all the inside baseball, I want to give you a little background. Our last change came at a time when the vast majority of computing and web browsing took place on desktop or laptop computers, using internet connections an order of magnitude or two slower than what most have access to today.
I know from conversations with clients, colleagues and my own children that more and more of us use phones and tablets exclusively. And, I know that accessibility and usability are critical to finding what you need quickly and efficiently. These aren’t new concepts, but practical applications need to evolve with the technology.
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Oddly enough, these changes come at a time when a lot of my client conversations also revolve around technological shift. I consider myself a techno-optimist at heart, with much of the last 200 years of market returns driven by technology. Just as our prior website design didn’t fully account for the rapid shift in mobile web browsing and other changes, our current investment thinking may be too short-sighted in what is possible.
Of course, hindsight being 20/20, many of these shifts now seem obvious in retrospect. Who wouldn’t want to sit on the couch to check their account balances rather than in the office chair at the desk? But, in the moment, we deal with far too much uncertainty about which technology will win out, how it will be implemented and, increasingly, how it will be regulated.
This isn’t just another conversation about artificial intelligence. But there is a follow-on conversation about what other technologies emerge from AI. Importantly for investors, how do we capitalize on as much of that change as possible as new technologies create new investment opportunities?
I could be accused of overstating the opportunity, but I don’t think this new shift is any different from the many technological shifts we’ve seen in the last 80 years. Since 1946, the S&P 500 has averaged better than 11% a year, including dividends. Those returns didn’t come from businesses unwilling to adapt. They were driven by businesses (in the case of the S&P 500, American businesses) finding growth in the opportunities revealed through technological shift.
Too often, we get bogged down in the minutiae of daily and weekly economic releases, a favorite stock, or the broad valuations in the market. But there’s a reason why Jeremy Siegel’s “Stocks for the Long Run” is one of the first investment books I recommend. We own stocks not for today’s opportunities or concerns but for the innovation they champion and the profitability that will drive them.
For our part, the website updates are purely an extension of who we are. It’s a tool to get you the information you care about as efficiently as possible with the added benefit of a more modern look. We know you come to our website for information, and we’re keeping that right at the top for you.
To that end, you’ll continue to access your accounts (both Pershing and the Morningstar portal) in the same way, and those links continue to be displayed prominently. Our podcasts, articles and videos also remain at the forefront.
Despite the new look, we’re still the same independent, client-focused firm. We look forward to continuing to provide you with the high quality and digestible investment information you count on from us.
Kyle Tetting is president of Landaas & Company, LLC.
(Initially posted June 27, 2024.)