In 1972, the stock market was dominated by a group of stocks Wall Street called the "Nifty Fifty." Companies so seemingly invincible that no price was too high to pay for them. Xerox. Polaroid. Kodak. Names that felt permanent.
That same year, Dick Will founded The Will Group, what would become RS Will Wealth Management.
Dick Will used to say, "When the market goes up, it's permanent. Every time it goes down, it's temporary." If only it were that simple.
Our investment philosophy is not complicated. We strive to own good investments for a long time.
If you've been a client of ours, you've likely heard about Berkshire Hathaway or seen it in your portfolio. Berkshire Hathaway, in many ways, is the most "RS Will" stock we own, a collection of durable businesses run by people who think in decades, not quarters.
Many of the people and institutions we respect have been stress-tested by history, and their ideas have shaped ours. Our team has made a point of attending the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meetings - not for the Dilly Bars, but because it is a reminder of what this business is about: owning pieces of real businesses and being patient. Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder letter is also required reading for every member of our team.
There are many ways to invest well, and there is no single answer in this business. But this is the story we've been telling - first by Dick, and now by our team - for more than fifty years: own good companies, understand what you own, and stay the course.
It has worked for us and for the families we serve – not because it is the only way, but because it's a way that makes sense to us. More importantly, it is a philosophy that clients can understand. An investment you can understand is an investment you can hold through a bad headline, a bad quarter, or a bad year.
Here is what we know with certainty: at some point, the market will go down. We don't know when. We don't know how far. We don't know what will cause it, what the response will be, how long the recovery will take, or how it will feel in the middle of it.
We have been there before, and we will manage through it again. We always have. Because the biggest driver of successful investment outcomes is not stock selection or tax strategy – though those matter. It's behavior. It's what we do when markets are uncomfortable. It's whether we have someone walking alongside us who has been through it before and can say, with conviction and experience: this is temporary.
Dick Will understood this in 1972. The Nifty Fifty eventually collapsed. Some of the companies that once seemed permanent turned out not to be. But the principle - that downturns end, that patience compounds, that owning good businesses and holding on can be a powerful act in a world driven by headlines and short-term thinking – that principle has endured.
We're still telling the story today. And we plan to keep telling it.
"The long run is just a collection of short runs, and capturing long-term growth means managing the short term effectively enough to ensure you can stick around for a long time."
-Morgan Housel, Investor and Author of The Psychology of Money (and many more)
