Weekend Reading: 2026 Mid-Year Market Update

It seems like every year around this time I get a strange sense of déjà vu.

This past March, markets fell sharply after the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran and the conflict escalated, and Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation, choking off a huge share of the world's oil and gas shipments.

It felt almost like a rerun of last spring, when the threat of “Liberation Day” tariffs sent stocks tumbling and had investors bracing for the worst.

Honestly, I'm starting to dread the stretch from February through April, since sharp, scary declines have hit in that window in 2020, 2022, 2025 and now 2026 as well.

Right on cue, my inbox fills up with anxious investors asking what they should do about falling markets in these unprecedented times. I sometimes wonder when the precedented times are supposed to happen.

My advice is always the same: stay the course. And it's often met with some version of “that's naive” or “easy for you to say.” Because of course this time is different, and the reason for the decline is always something new.

But the outcome tends to be remarkably predictable. Investors panic when uncertainty spikes, they sell or they freeze, and then they climb back in once the headlines move on to the next thing.

The most sensible way for most investors to capture market returns without getting whipsawed by every crisis of the moment is to hold a low cost, risk appropriate, globally diversified asset allocation ETF and just leave it alone.

Here's how those portfolios have performed so far this year, along with their trailing 1, 3 and 5 year returns:

Vanguard Asset Allocation ETFs:

• VCNS (40/60):
  – YTD: 6.52% | 1Y: 12.98% | 3Y: 10.88% | 5Y: 5.45%
• VBAL (60/40):
  – YTD: 9.14% | 1Y: 18.59% | 3Y: 14.71% | 5Y: 8.25%
• VGRO (80/20):
  – YTD: 11.79% | 1Y: 24.41% | 3Y: 18.57% | 5Y: 11.06%
• VEQT (100% equity):
  – YTD: 14.28% | 1Y: 30.02% | 3Y: 22.41% | 5Y: 13.83%

iShares Asset Allocation ETFs:

• XCNS (40/60):
  – YTD: 6.69% | 1Y: 13.21% | 3Y: 11.44% | 5Y: 5.97%
• XBAL (60/40):
  – YTD: 9.19% | 1Y: 18.45% | 3Y: 14.92% | 5Y: 8.57%
• XGRO (80/20):
  – YTD: 11.72% | 1Y: 23.77% | 3Y: 18.65% | 5Y: 11.26%
• XEQT (100% equity):
  – YTD: 14.25% | 1Y: 29.30% | 3Y: 22.29% | 5Y: 13.92%

If you're not investing this way, it's worth pulling up your own returns over the same stretch and comparing them to what a single, boring, all-in-one portfolio delivered with no effort at all.

For a cost of just 17 to 20 basis points, you get a more diversified and reliable outcome, and something that can actually help you stay in your seat the next time chaos shows up, because it always does eventually.

So here we are again, after staring down another spring scare that felt uniquely terrifying in the moment and will probably look, a year from now, like just another blip on the chart.

There will always be a reason for nervous investors to panic and sell. It's hard to wrap our brains around the idea that the reason why we can achieve the excellent returns posted above is because we have to tolerate the scary and unprecedented times along the way.

Best to think about it as if investors demand a higher long-term return for accepting stomach churning volatility in the short-term. That's the price of admission when it comes to investing.

This Week's Recap:

In my last Weekend Reading update I explained why new disclosure requirements called Total Cost Reporting will shine a brighter light on investment fees starting next year.

We are officially tapped out as far as the capacity to take on new clients. June was a record month, coming off of my latest appearance on The Wealthy Barber podcast at the end of May.

Discovery calls are fully booked for the remainder of 2026. We'll look to open up 2027 for new discovery calls in a few months.

But we also need to apply the brakes to our “fast pass” option (the option to skip the discovery call and move straight to information gathering) for the rest of summer. We've got more than enough on our plates between new clients, existing clients, and an upcoming summer vacation to Scotland and the France and Switzerland.

Hey, we can't tell our clients to loosen the purse strings and start living their best lives if we don't practice what we preach ourselves. That means we're taking a long break over the next 4-5 weeks to enjoy the summer at home and have some adventures abroad.

Weekend Reading:

Related to this week's main topic: High fees and underperforming funds? Anita Bruinsma explains when it’s OK to fire your financial advisor.

RBC Dominion Securities received a slap on the wrist ($3.4M fine) for failing to oversee high risk and high volume futures trading by two of its representatives. Check the trading activity in your investments statements, folks.

Have we hit the top? PWL Capital's Ben Felix shares the truth about investing at all-time highs:

Putting all your eggs in the S&P500 basket? A Wealth of Common Sense blogger Ben Carlson shows how everything is beating the S&P500 this year:

“This is a welcomed change for diversified investors. For years people worried about concentration in the stock market and what it meant to have a handful of stocks powering the market.”

The Rational Reminder podcast answered reader questions, including whether it's worthwhile to break up your all-in-one ETF into its individual parts to save on fees. I'm a firm ‘no' on that one.

Retirement expert David Blanchett's latest paper explores wealth and well-being in retirement. Worth a read.

Finally, fresh strawberries used to be a summer luxury. When did they become an all-season toddler snack?

Have a great weekend, everyone!