Financial Planning & Investment Management for Families with Special Needs

Hi everyone, my name is Aaron Osterberg and I will be kicking off our new monthly series where we share a tip from our top 10 special needs planning tips.

Tip number 1: Connect with other families facing similar challenges, both locally and nationally. Building a support network can make a huge difference. Look for organizations and nonprofits, join social media groups, and participate in community events. These connections can provide valuable insights and support.

Stay tuned for tip #2 coming next month. If you want to learn more, feel free to contact us – we’re here to help! Thank you.

Hi, I’m Mike Walther from Oak Wealth Advisors with your third quarter 2026 market update.

For the third quarter of the year, we actually saw the markets take a breather after having a fantastic start to the year. The first half was wonderful, with equity markets up double digits and bonds also posting positive returns.

The third quarter gave us a different story. Rising interest rates had an impact on both the stock and bond markets.

As you can see in this chart for the third quarter, the stock markets, both in the U.S. and internationally, were relatively flat, except for small caps, which are smaller U.S. companies, and had negative returns for the quarter. That was driven almost entirely by much higher interest rates, which were rising throughout the third quarter.

We see that reflected as well in the negative returns for the bond markets. Both taxable bonds and municipal bonds lost a decent amount of value in the third quarter, and that continued through September, at the end of the quarter, when bond prices fell even further.

Again, as I said, we’ve had great performance for the last several years and great performance in 2026. In the third quarter, that all slowed, and the bond markets really took a hit. Let’s look at how that impacted the overall economy.

Again, with rising rates in the third quarter, the stock market gave back some returns and slowed down because borrowing costs went up. This means that companies will be less profitable in a higher-rate environment.

With respect to the global markets, they followed suit. Interest rates were higher around the world, and that impacted international market performance as well.

For the bond markets, you saw in the prior chart how much those bond values went down because bond prices are inversely related to interest rates. So, when interest rates go up, bond prices go down.

Conversely, in the future, if we see rates come back down from their current high levels, we’ll get an increase in bond prices, which should be a nice recovery.

Going forward, the Federal Reserve has been raising rates and has indicated they’re probably going to raise rates one more time. They raise the federal funds rate, which impacts short-term borrowing at the highest levels, including borrowing by big banks. But it then flows through the economy, and we typically see higher rates as a result of Fed increases.

They’ve also signaled that in 2027, unless inflation gets worse—and that’s their primary target, keeping inflation down—they don’t anticipate raising rates further.

So hopefully, we’re reaching near the end of the rate-hike cycle, and that should be good for all investors.

With that, we look forward to you reaching out to us, checking us out on social media, and listening to our podcast, The Special Needs Voice, for more information about financial markets or special needs planning. We’re here for that.

By all means, reach out to your financial advisor if you need any help or assistance with your planning.

Take care, and best wishes.