Leelyn Smith

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Geneva, IL
Leelyn Smith

Wealth Management | Tax | Family Office Securities offered through LPL Financial, Member FINRA/SIPC. www.finra.org, www.sipc.org.

Investment advice offered through Leelyn Smith, a registered investment advisor and separate entity from LPL Financial. Third party posts found on this profile do not reflect the views of LPL Financial and have not been reviewed as to accuracy and completeness. The LPL Financial registered representatives associated with this page may discuss and/or transact business only with residents of the sta

tes in which they are properly registered or licensed. No offers may be made or accepted from any resident of any other state.

05/29/2026

Research in behavioral finance has documented a consistent finding: investors, on average, underperform the very funds they invest in. The gap exists not because of bad products or poor market timing but because of the decisions people make in response to how markets feel.

Loss aversion leads investors to sell during downturns, locking in losses that time would have recovered. And overconfidence produces concentration at exactly the wrong moments. These are not character flaws but are instead well-documented features of human judgment that become liabilities in investing environments.

Understanding this shapes how we build portfolios and how we work with clients. We design portfolios intended to reduce the emotional volatility that drives poor decisions, not just financial volatility. And we maintain the kind of ongoing relationship where we can have direct conversations when the instinct to act is in tension with the plan.

To us, conviction in investing is not the absence of doubt. It is the practice of acting on what you know rather than what you feel in a difficult moment.

Learn more about our investment ethos here:

https://www.leelynsmith.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/LS_Confidence_Driven_by_Conviction.pdf

05/25/2026

In case you missed it, we recently launched a series exploring our investment ethos. Today's pillar is about how planning and investing create a positive feedback loop, especially since we have an in-house investment and portfolio team, led by our Chief Investment Officer Brian Dorn, AIF®.

At many firms, even if they do have portfolio management in-house, financial planning and portfolio management are handled by separate teams working off separate timelines. They may share updates periodically, but they are not operating from a shared understanding of each client's full picture.

We think this arrangement creates a structural gap. A well-designed financial plan, one that accounts for a client's risk tolerance, time horizon, and actual goals, should be the starting point for determining the right investment strategy. And the right investment strategy gives clients something equally important: the conviction to stay committed to the plan when markets create pressure to act.

This is the feedback loop that separates intentional investing from reactive investing. The plan informs the portfolio, and the portfolio supports the plan.

It is also why integration matters at a structural level. When your wealth manager, your tax advisor, and your financial planner are working as one coordinated team, every decision is made with the full picture in view.

Learn more about our full Investment Ethos here:

https://www.leelynsmith.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/LS_Confidence_Driven_by_Conviction.pdf

05/20/2026

Ethical pressure in professional relationships rarely announces itself clearly. It often arrives disguised as efficiency, agreement, or the quiet reward of being considered easy to work with. Over time, those small accommodations can gradually erode the independent judgment that professional relationships depend on.

Our CFO and Managing Director, Elizabeth Pittelkow Kittner, CPA, CITP, CGMA, DTM, writes about this tension in the spring issue of ICPAS Insight Magazine. Her argument is one we think about at Leelyn Smith: the professionals clients trust most are not the ones who always agree, but the ones whose judgment holds even when the relationship makes it easier not to push back.

Independent judgment is not a compliance requirement. It is the foundation of advice worth having in any professional relationship.

Read Elizabeth's full piece in the link below.

https://www.icpas.org/resources/publications/insight-magazine/article-search/detail/spring-2026/the-ethics-of-professional-relationships

05/12/2026

One of the disciplines that defines how we invest on behalf of our clients is the deliberate pursuit of perspective that holds up over time.

In April, as part of our relationship with Yardeni Research, Inc. and our ongoing macroeconomic research process, Dr. Edward Yardeni met with our investment committee to update us on his current outlook. Dr. Yardeni is among the most respected economists in the profession, and his work has

consistently distinguished itself from Wall Street consensus, particularly on earnings forecasts and the underlying drivers of recession risk. Where most analysts rely on the yield curve as a recession predictor, Dr. Yardeni is known for identifying credit crunches as the more reliable signal – a perspective that has proven reliable over time.

The session focused on his "Roaring 2020s" thesis, a long-term economic framework that, despite a genuinely complex environment including geopolitical uncertainty, AI disruption, and energy price pressure, continues to hold. His current view: corporate earnings are not only strong but have been rising, which is notable given the backdrop.

We engage with research like this because our investment process depends on a durable macro foundation. Without a well-reasoned long-term thesis, the pressure to react to short-term market events becomes very difficult to resist, and emotional reaction to markets is the single greatest threat to long-term investor outcomes.

Dr. Yardeni's work gives our team the conviction to hold our position when the noise is loudest, and the language to explain to our clients what we are seeing and why. As Dr. Yardeni himself puts it: Wall Street analysts are notoriously bad at predicting recessions. That is exactly where his work comes in, and why we rely on it.

Learn more about Dr. Yardeni’s work here: https://www.yardeni.com/

04/28/2026

In case you missed it, we recently launched a "Behind The Investment Ethos" Series, sharing the principles that guide every investment decision we make on behalf of our clients. Today's topic is "Why long-term optimism is the foundation of our investment approach"

At the core of our investment philosophy is a straightforward view: over the long run, economic progress is a positive-sum game. Innovation in technology, healthcare, and manufacturing creates real improvements in how people live and work, and markets, over time, reflect that value.

History bears this out. Bull markets have, on average, lasted more than five times longer than bear markets, and the cumulative gains have been far larger than the losses. This does not mean downturns are not significant or that they should be dismissed. It means they should be understood in context instead of treated as the signal to act.

The practical consequence of this view is that our job is not to predict where markets will be next quarter. Our job is to build portfolios grounded in fundamentals, and to help our clients stay committed to those portfolios when markets are uncomfortable. Discipline during uncertainty is where long-term returns are actually earned.

That long-term optimism is the foundation of everything we build for clients. If you'd like to learn more about our investment philosophy, reach out.

04/21/2026

Tax Day was last week. For most people, that feels like the finish line. The pressure lifts, and financial decisions get to sit quietly until next spring.

We understand that feeling. We also know how much it costs.

The weeks that follow April 15 are actually some of the most valuable in the planning calendar, because for the first time all year, you have a complete picture of where things landed. And that means you can start making decisions today that will genuinely change what next year looks like, not just record it.

When your tax strategy and your wealth strategy are developed by the same team, working from the same understanding of your life, things like these become possible:
• Understanding how portfolio decisions create tax consequences before they happen
• Identifying Roth conversion windows, harvesting opportunities, and timing strategies throughout the year
• Aligning tax strategy with major life events: business transitions, equity compensation, retirement planning, wealth transfers

We built Leelyn Smith this way on purpose, because the coordination burden that usually falls on the client should not exist in the first place. When your tax team and your wealth team are the same team, that burden disappears.

If you have questions about what year-round integrated planning could look like for your family, we would be glad to start that conversation.

04/20/2026

Markets have been watching the Iran conflict closely since it began, and so have we.

Brian Dorn, AIF®, our Chief Investment Officer, released his Q2 market update with context we believe matters right now.

The short-term question is whether this conflict extends. The longer-term question is what it means for inflation, the Fed, and the AI-driven productivity thesis we entered 2026 with.

In the video, Brian covers:

• Why the S&P pullback needs context

• How oil prices, inflation, and a dove-ish Fed are in direct tension

• The sectors we believe have strong, defensible positions, regardless

Our view has not changed. But it is worth understanding why.

Watch the Q2 update today:

https://www.leelynsmith.com/insights/video/iran-war-impacts/

04/14/2026

Every market cycle has its stress tests. The Iran War is the current one.

Brian Dorn, AIF®, our Chief Investment Officer, just released his Q2 market update, and the message is one we believe is worth hearing right now.

We entered 2026 with a clear thesis: AI-driven productivity gains are a decade-long tailwind. That thesis has not changed yet, but the noise surrounding it has.

In the video, Brian covers:

• Why the S&P pullback needs context

• How oil prices, inflation, and the Fed are interacting in real time

• The shift from Magnificent 7 to value stocks, and what it signals

• Which sectors we believe have strong, defensible positions right now

Watch the full update here: https://www.leelynsmith.com/insights/video/iran-war-impacts/

04/02/2026

The assumption that filing season requires sacrificing winter and spring has real consequences: for talent attraction, for retention, and for the quality of work delivered by people running on empty.

Firms that manage this well tend to share three things:

• Deliberate capacity planning across the full year, not just the months before April

• Technology and documented processes that create workflow visibility and reduce last-minute pressure

• Clear communication with clients about what each engagement requires, which builds better relationships and more realistic expectations on both sides

When accountants carry demanding but sustainable workloads, the effects compound in the right direction. Client service improves, and institutional knowledge stays inside the firm.

Burnout is not the price of serious tax work. We are working to demonstrate that.

03/25/2026

Right now, two things are creating undervalued pockets in the market: geopolitical pressure on oil prices, and the structural questions around AI's impact on software valuations. Our clients hear about both constantly. What they hear less often is what to actually do about them.

Depending on a client's situation, a drawdown can open the door to several meaningful moves:

• Deploying excess cash or bonds into equities at better prices

• Frontloading retirement contributions, particularly for business owners with flexibility on timing and matching

• Gifting securities in kind to family members

• Repositioning inherited positions that were not tax-efficient to move before

• Harvesting tax losses to offset gains elsewhere

• Executing a Roth conversion while prices are down

Two clients with nearly identical portfolios can have two completely different right answers. That is why we don't use a standardized playbook. We call with a specific conversation, built around what we already know about you.

If you have questions about how current market conditions might affect your portfolio or create planning opportunities, we would be glad to connect. Reach out at [email protected].

Address

10 N Third Street
Geneva, IL
60134

Telephone

+16302328995

Website

http://www.leelynsmith.com/

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