My Views from Wall Street to Center Street - Q4 2026

My Views

From Wall Street to Center Street

Q4 2026 Edition  |  October 15, 2026

"Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us."

Hebrews 12:1

•  Personal Notes

•  What Dolly Knew About Your Money

•  Jolene, and the Four Who Came for Your Money

•  Closing Notes

Thank you. 60 years doesn't happen without you. To those of you who were there on September 24th, you already know. You saw it. And for those who couldn't make it, let me give you a feeling for the night.

Let me put you there.

You came in the front doors at Ridgefields and down the steps, and right there at the bottom was our history, laid out to walk through. Photographs, the history book we put together, the artifacts we've collected along the way. Among them, an old Kingsport Times-News. The paper once ran a past, present and future edition, where it tried to picture what Kingsport would look like 50 years down the road from the mid 60s. And right there in that same edition was an ad for my grandfather's store, telling the whole city it had been serving Kingsport since 1934.

The Binghams have been in business in Kingsport since 1934.

And then there was the cake. Cakebuds Signature made us a cake that was our building, exact, down to the smallest detail. Folks couldn't stop looking at it. That building is where people come to be taken care of, and that night it fed them one more time.

Then the doors opened and we walked out onto the terrace, out over the golf course with the river right there and the mountain behind it. I worked those grounds 40-some years ago. That's where I learned “unreasonable hospitality.” It was a chamber of commerce evening. Music played by the decade while the pictures ran past to present, people walking and talking and laughing their way through 60 years.

And right as we settled in for the anthem and the prayer, the ducks came up off the river in formation and flew right past us. My friend David, who gave the prayer, is the one who noticed.

Fusion fed us and it was exquisite. David gave the prayer, we played the anthem, and then we just enjoyed each other.

That night you got to meet the team. Jennifer, Leslie, Diane, some of them new enough you'd never put a face to the voice on the phone. Sherry, who's been right here for 25 years.

And Matt. Everything that lands in your inbox every week, the Tuesday letter, Thursday, Friday, that's Matt. He's also the one who sang & played the anthem that night.

Jake got up in front of that whole room. Public speaking is the thing people run from harder than just about anything, and he walked right into it. He opened with this: "If anybody went to our March Madness event, he bet me that I couldn't give a speech longer than him. I've gone ahead and already paid that out." And then he asked you for your help. My dad was my father, my business partner, and my best friend. All three. And watching Jake up there, that's what I see coming for him and me. That's a blessing.

And the new website is live. There's a lot more on it for you now, knowledge, straight answers, and my take on what's going on with your money. It's where we're headed.

And here's the ask, and I'll make it plain because you've earned plain. For all these years you've protected me, and you've participated with me, and this whole firm is what we built together. So I'm asking you to do one more thing. Do that same thing for Jake. Protect him. Participate with him. Send him the people you love who need what we do.

And when the night was over, we climbed back up those same steps and walked out the front doors, out of 60 years of history and into whatever comes next. Which is right where I want us.

Because the best is yet to come, we put it on everything that night, and folks took it home. You'll see it out at the grocery store and the ball game. And when somebody squints at it and asks you, “Do you really believe that?” you tell them yes. In a world this full of doom and gloom, let me show you why we still believe it.

Nine to Five

We lost one of our own this summer. Dolly passed in August, 80 years old, and if you're reading this up here in East Tennessee, you don't need me to tell you what she meant. She was ours before she was the world's. A girl out of a one-room cabin in the Smokies who got underestimated her whole life, too flashy, too country, too much, and spent 60 years proving every last one of them wrong.

I got to thinking about her this quarter, because the market's been doing the same thing she did.

Everybody keeps calling this bull market fake. It turned 4 years old this month, and that's a long run for a bull. The whole way up, somebody's been hollering that it can't last, it isn't real, it's about to fall apart. And the whole way up, it's kept showing up for work. Nine to five. The way Dolly did. The way you do. That's endurance. The money doesn't get made by the folks calling it fake from the sidelines. It gets made by the ones who stay in and keep punching the clock.

Now, Dolly wrote the other song too. Jolene. The woman who shows up to take what's yours. And this quarter the market had 4 Jolenes come knocking.

The first Jolene came for rates. The 10-year Treasury climbed to 5.3%, the highest it's been since 2007, and that number scared a lot of people. But look at why she came. She didn't come because inflation's running wild. Inflation expectations have held at 2.2% for 3 years. She came because the economy is strong and the government is borrowing a mountain of money. That's a different visitor entirely. One's a fever. The other's just a big appetite. And here's what matters about Jolene at the door: it's not how tall she is that hurts you, it's how fast she moves. A rate that climbs slowly, the market walks right alongside. It's the lunge that knocks you down. This one didn't lunge.

The second Jolene was inflation herself, and both things are true at once. The market cares about the rate of change. You care about the cost of living. So when we tell you inflation has cooled, hear us right. We mean the climbing slowed, not that it got cheaper. We see the same receipts you do.

Here's the thing about inflation nobody tells you: it's the same coin, foe on one side, friend on the other. The foe is the one you meet at the register. You know that side well. You've met her all year. But flip the coin. The very thing that lifts prices, lifts the value of what you own, and that side is your friend. She's the one who grows your income in retirement to meet the higher bills, and the one who grows your nest egg faster than prices climb while you're still building it. Same coin, same Jolene. She takes from you on one side and pays you back on the other, as long as you're holding the coin at all.

The third Jolene was the Fed. In September they raised rates for the first time since 2023, and they've signaled at least one more. And like inflation, she's a coin. The side most of you are holding is the friend. Higher rates pay you, on your cash, your CDs, your short bonds, money in your pocket for sitting still. Flip her over and she's the one who costs the borrower, and she's hardest on the one already squeezed, carrying a card balance she makes worse. But at our table, most of you are holding the side that pays. That's no accident.

The fourth Jolene was bonds, and this is the one I've been telling you about across this table for a while now. Everybody in your portfolio's got a job. The market's been clocking in nine to five, like we said. Bonds have a job too. They're supposed to hold steady and catch you when stocks fall. But they haven't been showing up for it. Not this quarter, down for the quarter and down on the year, and really not since COVID. Stocks fell, bonds fell right alongside them. When somebody won't do the job you hired them for, you quit waiting on them. So we don't count on bonds to catch you. We buy the protection ourselves, and put the rest to work.

Through all 4 of them, the market kept its feet. Earnings are strong, a third straight quarter of better than 25% growth, and the market actually got cheaper on the way up, because companies earned more than prices rose. The biggest risk right now isn't being too aggressive. It's being too timid. Sitting it out, waiting on a perfect moment that never rings the bell.

So that was the quarter. 4 Jolenes came knocking, rates, inflation, the Fed and bonds, and not one walked off with what was yours. Here's where things stood through the end of it.

One row in red.  The rest held.  That's not luck.

It's a door built to hold while you keep living your life.

We opened on a race. Run with endurance, the Book says. Not a sprint. The long kind. And that's the thread under everything this year. Dolly, 80 years of it. This firm, 60. This country, 250. Not one of them got there on a sprint. They got there by enduring: showing up, holding the pace mile after mile, proving the doubters wrong the slow way, the only way that lasts. That's the race we're in, and it's the one we hand off and keep running. The best was always yet to come for Dolly. I believe the same about your plan, this country, and every one of you in this race with us. Stay in the race.

Let me close by saying thank you. It's an honor you trust me with this.

If you ever need me, call me. It doesn't have to be about money. That's what family does for one another.

Keep the Faith. God Bless America.

Jeff

Jeff Bingham, President  |  B&H Wealth Strategies

Phone:  423-247-1152   Email:  Jeff@bhretire.com