Our best to you during this exciting year ahead. It is particularly humbling to us to be able to open a new office in a great building in Blue Ash. This office will allow us to grow and expand as we intend. We will be able to bring state of the art technology and expanded research capacity in order to provide the best results for you that are possible.

I have included some interesting statistics as we close out the year.

• The S&P 500 was positive on a total return basis during all 12 months in calendar year 2017 (Source BTN Research)
• The S&P 500 stock index has gained an average of 10.1% per year (total return) over the last 50 years, where it has been up during 40 of the last 50 years i.e. 80% of the time (Source BTN Research)
• The small cap Russell 200 stock index has gained 10.2% per year over the last 35 years (1983-2017) (Source: Russell)
• The international stock index, EAFE gained 25% total return in 2017 (Source BTN Research)

We remain optimistic that 2018 could be another positive year for the markets. Tax reform, additional economic stimulus, as well as continued foreign economic improvement could all provide catalysts.