By now I’m sure all of you are aware that gas is around $2 a gallon. We keep hearing from different sides on why it’s either the greatest thing since sliced bread or why it’s bad for the economy. It seems that there are valid points on both sides of the argument.
The thing that struck me the most was who would have predicted $2 a gallon for gas this time one year ago? Pick a date. I don’t think anyone was standing on a soapbox saying that at the beginning of 2015, declining oil prices will drop gas prices almost in half. Think 
about all of the highly intelligent people who invested billions of dollars in exploration of natural resources because of the rising global energy costs. How did they not see this?
The same foes for anyone who didn’t see the tech crash, or the real estate crash, or any other event that seems to have caught us by surprise. The point is that the more things change, the more they stay the same and the one constant seems to be unpredictability. In business, they call this unpredictability “Market Risk.” Market risk isn’t just talking about the stock market, it’s about all of the factors that you may not be considering in your current situation or the current environment.
Not predicting these events doesn’t make any of us foolish, but it certainly highlights that proper planning and taking market risk into consideration is something we ought to be doing. That’s one of the things we do at Madrona Financial Services. We help our clients plan for the unplanned, and that’s why we’re here every month, every week, every day to share information with our clients to better prepare them for a volatile market full of unknowns.
