LFG Portfolio Update

Retirement Isn’t the Finish Line—It’s a Pivot Point

For decades, retirement has been framed as the ultimate goal: work hard, save diligently, and one day… stop. But in practice, many retirees discover something surprising—doing nothing isn’t nearly as fulfilling as they imagined.

That’s why working with purpose in retirement isn’t just “okay”… it’s often one of the healthiest financial and lifestyle decisions you can make.

The Reality: Many Retirees Keep Working (By Choice) A growing number of Americans are choosing to work in some capacity during retirement—not out of necessity, but out of desire. Various studies consistently show that roughly 30% to 50% of retirees engage in part-time work, consulting, or passion projects. And notably, a large portion of pre-retirees say they plan to do the same.

Why? Because retirement isn’t just a financial transition—it’s a psychological one.

Purpose > Paycheck After decades of structure, responsibility, and interaction, a sudden stop can feel jarring. Work—when chosen intentionally—provides:

• Routine and structure to your week

• Social engagement that keeps you sharp

• A sense of contribution and identity

• And yes, a little extra income, which can reduce pressure on your portfolio

But the key difference is this: in retirement, you’re working because you want to, not because you have to.

Financial Flexibility Matters Even modest income in retirement can have an outsized impact. A part-time job earning $15,000–$25,000 per year can:

• Delay withdrawals from investment accounts

• Reduce sequence-of-return risk early in retirement

• Potentially allow Social Security benefits to grow

• Provide a buffer for discretionary spending (travel, hobbies, family)

In other words, purpose-driven work can quietly strengthen your entire financial plan.

Redefining “Retirement” The old model of retirement—completely stepping away from productivity—is fading. Today, it’s more about freedom and optionality.

Some retirees:

• Consult in their former field a few days a month

• Start small businesses or passion projects

• Volunteer in ways that feel like meaningful work

• Take on flexible, low-stress part-time roles

This isn’t a step backward—it’s evolution.

You don’t need to fully stop working to be “retired.” In fact, for many people, the best version of retirement includes some level of engagement, contribution, and purpose.

Financial independence gives you the freedom to choose. And often, the happiest retirees are the ones who choose to stay in the game—just on their own terms.

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

For the first quarter of 2026, the S&P 500 was down -4.33%, while the LFG Symons stock portfolio was down -0.03%, an outperformance of 4.3%. Once again, these numbers are based on our largest, most mature account, so they’re unaudited and you should take them with a grain of salt. I’m hoping that we get audited numbers, this year, but we’re still working on it.

So, what happened in the quarter? We began with the idea that liquidity would surprise by starting out strong, which is exactly what happened. That gave us a big lead in January. Unfortunately, that seemed to be the peak, as geopolitical risk hurt the theory of our basic ideas.

What were our basic ideas? We believed rate differentials were likely to encourage a low dollar, and ample liquidity would support markets. War hit both of those ideas, with investors moving into the dollar for safety and running away from credit risk.

The credit risk was particularly acute as too many investors tried to exit out of a narrow door. To be clear, we view this very much as a liquidity problem far more than a credit problem. There will always be some degree of credit stress when dealing with low-quality credit, but I struggle to see substantive problems. Chances are that will happen eventually, but for now this just looked like reflexivity in action and we’ve seen a good bounce that I would expect to continue.

Towards the end of the quarter, we got news that hostilities were slowing and we started to bounce. All of this is very standard for these situations, which is why we made all the moves we did, particularly in the last month or two. As the bounce has continued to new all-time highs, this positioning looks pretty good.

Specifically, our viewpoint was that the environment that started the year would reassert and we’d see a lower dollar and friendlier liquidity. To take advantage of what we viewed as a temporary situation, we spent the quarter getting out of stocks that directly benefitted from the war and went into stocks that were hit by the liquidity strain. Thus, we exited CNQ and DOW and entered stocks like ORCL and PRU.

I like talking about longer-term performance, as I think there’s information value in that. However, we don’t have much of a track record yet, as we’re a pretty new company. I could claim I, personally, have a long-term history of outperforming the market, but I’m not sure that’s worth overmuch. I can say that we seem to be outperforming the market by over 7% in less than a year, which seems encouraging.

I’d like to think we can continue that outperformance, and that should be possible as investors chase one idea to another. The wide dispersion in returns we’ve seen lately is both a danger and an opportunity. So far, so good, for us, though we certainly haven’t been perfect.

For instance, in a quarter where energy dominated returns, we held very little and went to a zero weighting too early on. Fortunately, other holdings held up well enough to outperform. During the quarter, while we danced around a bit with the software fear/greed cycle, we exited the quarter with a lot of new software positions, something that looks good so far, early into the new quarter.

Hopefully we can continue to make good decisions and outperform. Right now, the market is still struggling with a lot of fears started from the first quarter. We think that’s misplaced and are far more bullish than that. However, we do look forward and worry the war may have sowed the seeds for a slowdown that could assert by the next time we write about quarterly performance. As always, we’ll watch and see what happens.

Chaos with the Strait, where it was originally opened, then closed. The US also seized an Iranian ship that attempted to pass the naval blockade. There are probably talks on Tuesday or Wednesday, though. Oil is up 6% to $89 on the news, while SPX is down -0.5%.

Iraq said they would restart oil exports in the next few days.

A tsunami is hitting Japan after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake. Two major chip facilities are in the danger zone.

SPX hit another ATH on Friday, up 1.2%, on the announcement Iran agreed to reopen the Strait.

GOOG is in discussions with Marvell (MRVL) to develop two new AI chips to run AI models more efficiently, sending MRVL up 6%.

What does it all mean? Markets are pulling back a bit as the bid for Middle East peace hits snags.

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

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