Don't Procrastinate Important Financial Moves, LFG Daily - February 23, 2026

Dream Bigger, Sleep Better

At Lloyd Financial Group, we’re constantly striving to give you more insight, more clarity, and more confidence when it comes to your money. Our Chief Investment Officer, Colin Symons, now delivers his own daily newsletter, offering deep analysis and a detailed outlook on the ever-changing investment world called Symons Says. Check it out and subscribe if you want a very detailed, daily analysis of the investment world. Colin has amazing content.

Meanwhile, the LFG Daily will continue to bring you quick, actionable summaries — blending market updates with financial planning and tax strategies to help you make smarter decisions every day. Together, they’re the perfect one-two punch: Colin brings the deep dive into Investments, we bring the daily edge.

Luke Lloyd, CEO Lloyd Financial Group

Procrastination Is the Silent Tax on Your Wealth

There’s a silent tax that erodes more wealth than inflation, recessions, or even bad investments.

It’s procrastination.

In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill wrote that procrastination is one of the most common causes of failure. He didn’t say lack of intelligence. He didn’t say lack of opportunity. He said procrastination.

And after years of sitting across the table from families talking about money, I can tell you — he was right.

The Cost of “I’ll Do It Later”

We don’t ruin our financial futures with dramatic decisions. We do it quietly.

• “I’ll increase my 401(k) next year.”

• “I’ll open that Roth IRA when things slow down.”

• “I’ll get life insurance after the baby is born.”

• “I’ll start investing when the market feels safer.”

  
  

But “later” is expensive.

A 30-year-old who waits five years to begin investing doesn’t just lose five years — they lose decades of compound growth. Compounding is not linear; it’s exponential. The early years matter most.

Procrastination doesn’t just delay wealth.It permanently reduces it.

Fear Disguised as Logic

Most procrastination in financial planning isn’t laziness. It’s fear wearing a suit and tie.

• Fear of making the wrong investment.

• Fear of market volatility.

• Fear of committing to a long-term strategy.

• Fear of confronting debt.

• Fear of facing how much (or how little) you’ve saved.

  
  

Hill talked about indecision being the breeding ground of fear. The longer we sit in indecision, the more comfortable it becomes.

And comfort is the enemy of progress.

The Wealthy Make Decisions Quickly

One of Hill’s most powerful observations in Think and Grow Rich was this:

Successful people make decisions promptly and change them slowly. Unsuccessful people make decisions slowly and change them quickly.

In financial planning, this shows up clearly:

• Wealth builders automate savings.

• They invest consistently.

• They commit to long-term strategies.

• They adjust thoughtfully — not emotionally.

  
  

Meanwhile, procrastinators stay in research mode. They consume podcasts. They read headlines. They analyze endlessly.

But they don’t act.

And wealth rewards action.

The Compound Effect of Small Moves

Building wealth is rarely about bold predictions or market timing. It’s about small, repeated, disciplined decisions:

• Open the high-yield savings account.

• Increase your savings rate by 1%.

• Rebalance the portfolio.

• Update your estate plan.

• Consolidate old retirement accounts.

• 
  

None of these are dramatic.

But done consistently over decades, they create financial freedom.

Procrastination kills momentum. Action builds it.

The Real Question

If procrastination is the biggest hindrance to wealth, the solution isn’t brilliance.

It’s urgency.

Not reckless urgency — but deliberate urgency.

Do the paperwork.Make the call.Set up the automatic contribution.Schedule the planning meeting.Write the will.

Financial success isn’t usually lost in catastrophe. It’s lost in delay.

As Hill warned nearly a century ago, opportunity often appears in disguise — sometimes as a simple, uncomfortable decision you’ve been putting off.

The question isn’t whether you know what to do.

The question is:What are you postponing that your future self desperately needs you to handle today?

Don’t leave your financial future up to chance. Let’s build a plan that gives you confidence today and peace of mind for tomorrow. Click here to schedule a meeting — I’m here to help you take the next step toward financial freedom.

Colin Symons, CIO Lloyd Financial Group

In a normal bell curve (which admittedly doesn’t really describe financial markets but is reasonably close and makes the math much easier,) a little more than 2% of the time, you’re going to get a surprisingly bad result, even with a strategy that works over time. Considering roughly 252 trading days in the year, that means five days out of the year, you’re likely to do surprisingly poorly.

Why do I bring that up? On Friday, while the market was driven higher by large cap tech, the Russell 2000 was flat, and our stocks also did poorly. Yes, I could just ignore that and hope nobody noticed, but I tend to write about what I’d want to know about, and nobody ever called me a clever marketer. So, what happened and is it a problem?

I don’t think Friday represents a problem and if it was, I’d do something about it. If our stocks violate what we expect of them, they get sold. If we no longer believe a stock can contribute to the portfolio, we sell them. That’s life. I bring up standard deviation because sometimes you just get unlucky. Imagine taking a six-sided die and rolling a 1 twice in a row. That’s unlucky, but only a fraction of a percent more frequent than a two standard deviation event.

In this case, we happened to have some bad news all happen on the same day. For instance, ASTS just closed a convertible bond, where many short stock against it to hedge out the equity risk. This is at the same time as a lot of space plays are also struggling, with liquidity and inflation risks recently present, hurting high beta and momentum stocks. I worry about every stock we own, that’s part of my job, but I like my odds here. Board members have bought on the open market at these levels and institutional investors are buying. They’ve shown the product works and the satellite launches should increase in pace.

We also had another round of software fear on Friday, with Anthropic announcing a code security AI app that hit cybersecurity stocks. That hit FTNT for -2% and put the chill on other software names. I won’t rehash the software debate here; I’ll just note software overall has failed to hit new lows. This news caused selling and hurt our Friday but not to a level worse than we’ve seen in the recent past.

Another problem was in chemicals, with Chemours (CC) reporting soft earnings on bad industrial business, which in turn sent our DOW stock -3%. The thing is, there isn’t much overlap between the companies. CC is about high-value, complex chemicals, while DOW is about plastics and commodities. There’s just not much overlap and thus, not much reason DOW should get sold.

I don’t want to go into exhaustive detail, here, I just want to point out that sometimes a surprisingly good mix of events come about and sometimes you get a bad mix. On Friday, we got the bad mix. It happens. Fortunately, sometimes, you should also have good days, and we got some of those to start the year. That helps a lot.

You can’t change the past, but you can monitor the likelihood the bad times continue. In this case, I think we have cause for cheer. The SOFR-IORB spread had been climbing, indicating pretty fundamental funding stress, but that started to reverse on Friday. Credit spreads had also been climbing until reversing on Friday. While PCE was a bit hot, Treasury bond inflation expectations improved, a bit. Fundamentally, the macro environment remains good.

Bad days will happen, if only from basic randomness. While we try to control for that, making long-term gains is more of a core focus for us. There will be further risk events, such as NVDA earnings on Wednesday. Those risk events have been amply hedged by the market, with shorting high. I continue to like the odds of being optimistic, here, as nothing yet has seemed to break enough to cause prolonged trouble. If shorts don’t payout soon, buying pressure is likely to appear.

Advance Q4 GDP was 1.4% vs. exp. 3%. Personal Consumption stayed up at 2.4% on the quarter, but the Price Index jumped to 3.6% vs. exp. 2.8%. That’s all stagflation-sounding, which isn’t great. The big surprise was the inflation number staying sticky. Arguably, the government shutdown had an effect.

PCE was 0.4% m/m vs. exp. 0.3%, while Core PCE was exactly the same.

Trump’s global tariffs were stricken down by the US Supreme Court, as expected. This caused chaos, of course. Now, there’s a new, temporary, global 15% tariff rate. Details are scarce, but I think the new tariff would replace most of the lost revenue. It’s also problematic because it’s a worse deal for some countries, hurting allies. Presumably, this is a modestly dollar negative event.

Factory Orders, Chicago Fed National Activity Index, and Dallas Fed Manufacturing, today.

What does it all mean? Nerves remain high on Iran and NVDA, so the market is amply hedged for trouble.

Don’t leave your financial future up to chance. Let’s build a plan that gives you confidence today and peace of mind for tomorrow. Click here to schedule a meeting — I’m here to help you take the next step toward financial freedom.

Disclosures/Regulation:

This content is intended to provide general information about Lloyd Financial. It is not intended to offer or deliver investment advice in any way. Information regarding investment services are provided solely to gain an understanding of our investment philosophy, our strategies and to be able to contact us for further information.

All information has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy is not guaranteed. There is no representation or warranty as to the current accuracy, reliability or completeness of, nor liability for, decisions based on such information and it should not be relied on as such.

The views expressed in this commentary are subject to change based on market and other conditions. These documents may contain certain statements that may be deemed forward‐looking statements. Please note that any such statements are not guarantees of any future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected. Any projections, market outlooks, or estimates are based upon certain assumptions and should not be construed as indicative of actual events that will occur.

Past performance is no guarantee of future returns.

Different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk. Therefore, it should not be assumed that future performance of any specific investment or investment strategy will be profitable