June 4, 2026
Current Market Activity
| Sector / Asset Class | 2026 Year-To-Date Return | Total 2025 Return |
| S&P 500 large stock bucket | +10.6% | +16.4% |
| Tech stocks group | +31.5% | +19.4% |
| Utility stocks group (ex. income) | +2.5% | +12.6% |
| Staples stocks (food, household) | +5.8% | +0.1% |
| Gold | +2.9% | +63.6% |
| Bitcoin | -27.3% | -4.1% |
| Bonds – Fixed Income (incl. income) | +1.6% | +6.6% |
| Preferred Stock (incl. income) | +8.2% | +6.3% |
| CD rate, 1-year average | +1.6% | +3.6% |
IPO Extravaganza
There has been talk for the past few years about the initial public offering (IPO) potential of some of the world’s largest private companies, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and most recently, SpaceX. These companies are innovating at an impressive pace and will soon have their shares traded publicly and available to all investors on the major stock markets.
With the flood of publicity accompanying the upcoming stock sale of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, clients have asked whether they should be participating in its purchase.
The chart below illustrates the average return of publicly traded companies after their IPO.
Unfortunately, in the long term, most companies that go public tend to underperform the market and wind up giving subpar returns. The average performance of an IPO company gets worse the further out you look from their IPO date. This culminates in 64% of IPOs offering lower than negative 10% returns when you look at their stock price three years after their initial public offering. Ouch.
This underperformance led one of the greatest investment fund managers, Peter Lynch, to famously state:
“IPO stands for It’s Probably Overpriced.”
Why such poor stock returns?
Promotional marketing by the company during the IPO process often overstates projected company performance.
To illustrate, many investors are unaware that SpaceX loses billions annually, and its most recent sales figures indicate revenue growth of less than 6%. Of course, Elon Musk will not focus on these unfavorable trends while he attempts to raise money for the company by selling stock.
For a company to make it into our core group of recommended stocks, it must show, among other things, strong sales and profit growth trends.
Artificial Intelligence
As technologies continue to advance, our firm continues to incorporate these innovations into our daily lives and operations in places where it is helpful to do so.
One way we use artificial intelligence is to assist us in the gathering of data for our evaluation of company fundamentals through conglomerating earnings and revenue figures, market share, and projected growth expectations in the company’s industry in one place.
We also see AI having an increasing role in evaluating the asset mix and cash levels of our clients’ portfolios. Through the use of targeted AI evaluations, we can make necessary tweaks in accounts much faster than if we had to gather such data manually.
On a related note, more and more everyday people are using artificial intelligence to help themselves make decisions, such as what financial advisor they should choose to assist in their wealth management.
We are happy to announce that an increasing number of people are finding our firm through the use of AI by searching for their best choice in financial advising using Gemini, ChatGPT, and other artificial intelligence models. This is done through the AI analyzing data on our company such as our principles as outlined in our dispatches and website materials, but also through the evaluation of our client reviews and status as a fully independent investment firm.
We are honored to see this, and we welcome prospective clients in using such technologies to help them make wise decisions.
Patience, Patience, and Palo Alto Networks
Few companies provide a snapshot of why we believe in holding quality companies long-term better than Palo Alto Networks, Inc.
The cybersecurity giant has experienced a great deal of volatility and relative stagnation over the past year as markets attempted to digest what AI will mean for the software and cybersecurity industries.
After these rocky price fluctuations, the stock has rocketed up. The company has continued to outperform expectations in their growth of their business by over 54% in 2026 and by 353% in the last five years. Phenomenal performance.
Our firm’s research has revealed that companies such as Palo Alto will be beneficiaries of AI, rather than a victim, for three main reasons:
- Cyberattacks will be made more dangerous and require faster responses by organizations due to the use of AI models in such attacks.
- As AI progresses and more tasks are given to AI “Agents,” these agents will need to be secured and have their access to sensitive company files monitored and managed.
- Palo Alto Networks takes a holistic “Platform” approach, rather than just securing the end device such as a tablet, phone, or personal computer. They provide firewall protection, cloud protection, and leading AI agent and workflow protection to many of the largest companies and even many governments around the world. This stands out from other companies which specialize in securing the end device, but not the network around such devices.
The performance so far of Palo Alto illustrates the tendency of how short-term jitters in stock pricing should not always influence buy-sell decisions. Patience and quality investing pay off in the long term.
Thank You!
Thank you to our clients that voted for us in this year’s Hernando Sun Readers’ Choice competition. We finished as one of the top financial planning firms in the county, scoring higher than some of the largest asset managers in the country, who finished the competition ranked below us. It is truly an honor to receive such support, and we are humbled by it.
P.S. What would you like to hear more about in our next dispatch? Send us a quick email and we will do our best to cover your ideas in our upcoming newsletter. Thank you!
Warmest regards,
Dougherty Investment Advisors
A Tradition of Excellence
4048 Deltona Blvd
Spring Hill, FL 34606
Website: www.doughertyinvestments.com
Phone: 352-238-6411
