Welcome to Dinergy’s risk assessment tool. By clicking the continue button, you’ll answer a few questions to learn how you feel about financial risk. As a security measure, you’ll leave our website and create an account with Nitrogen, our analytics partner. Your personal information such as phone numbers and email addresses will be kept strictly confidential.

Talk…about money

Be Optimistic But Stay Calm

by | Sep 23, 2026 | Investing

There is a great feeling around Cincinnati right now. The Bengals are 2-0 and we are all convincing ourselves that THIS is the year everything goes exactly according to plan.

You know how it is around town. A good Bengals Sunday can carry into Monday morning. You hear a little more football talk at the coffee shop, somebody has a Bengals hat on at the grocery store, and by the time you get to work, everybody has an opinion about the season.  I think I even heard a “Who Dey” at Skyline yesterday.  

Deep down we all know better.  The NFL season is a long one.  There WILL be a game where Joe Burrow throws three interceptions, the defense gives up a few too many big plays, and we start wondering what happened to the team we watched in early September.

Investing is no different. You can have a well-built portfolio, a solid financial plan, and a pretty good understanding of where you are going, and then one Tuesday morning you look at your account and discover that your best-performing stock is suddenly down 7%.  Or a whole sector is down 5%.  

Why does this happen?  Sometimes there is a good reason. Sometimes the market is reacting to something you didn’t see coming. And sometimes, frankly, nobody seems to know.  That doesn’t necessarily mean something is wrong with your plan.

Think about the Bengals. If Burrow has a three-interception game in October, Zac Taylor isn’t going to bench Joe, throw out the entire playbook, and start over on Monday morning. You look at the film, figure out what needs attention, make a few adjustments, and get ready for the next game.

Investing should work the same way.  There will be bad days. There will be disappointing quarters. There will be investments that don’t perform the way you expected. There will even be days when you look at your portfolio and wonder why the thing you thought was your safest investment suddenly decided to join the chaos.

That’s where having the right plan matters.  A good financial plan isn’t designed around the assumption that everything will go perfectly. It is designed with the understanding that things won’t.  The goal isn’t to avoid every bump in the road. That’s impossible.  The goal is to know what you’re going to do when you hit one.  

So enjoy 2-0. Enjoy the football, the conversation, the optimism, and maybe even that little bit of confidence (dare we say swagger?) that comes with being a Bengals fan in September.

Just remember, nobody is planning the parade yet or checking the playoff schedule.  Investing is a long season too. Stay focused on the game plan, make adjustments when they are necessary, and don’t let one bad Sunday convince you that the whole season is lost.