While the holiday season is ideally a time for family and friends, it is also the best time to review tax strategies for the coming year. Tax planning includes topics such as tax-loss harvesting, choices of investment vehicles, optimizing the order of withdrawals, and many others.

There's a common saying among investors that markets take the stairs up and the elevator down. This is because the long-term trends that drive markets higher tend to be slow moving and compound over time, whereas the events that create short-term panic tend to be sudden and unexpected.

The author F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that "the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." This concept, often referred to as "cognitive dissonance," is something all investors must grapple with on a regular basis.

The strength of consumer spending and household balance sheets has been a bright spot in an otherwise challenging market and economic environment. These factors have helped to keep the economy out of recession and have bolstered corporate earnings, but they have also kept inflation hotter than the Fed might otherwise like, resulting in higher interest rates.

While war escalates in the Middle East, a political battle is also heating up in Washington. As of this writing, there is still no House speaker in Congress after Kevin McCarthy's exit and Steve Scalise's withdrawal over the past two weeks. While a number of Republican and House votes are scheduled to attempt to resolve this leadership vacuum, there are more political hurdles on the horizon.