As many of you have no doubt noticed, the market’s been in a bit of a downtrend lately with a pretty significant sell off today, Wednesday, which is widely ascribed to the market’s reminder that COVID is still a significant problem.
The numbers are up across the board in the US and across most of the world. And while this is no surprise to us, we’ve been predicting that COVID is going to be a deep and enduring problem for a long time. And it’s not, again, just this winter, although winter is expected to be the worst time. I’m hopeful that we will be through this by Christmas 2021, but not overly optimistic.
It’s just a real intractable problem with profound ramifications for the economy.
So again, that surprised me. This is probably not nearly the end of the market volatility, especially as we go into the election. And I just want to emphasize two things. Number one, we’re watching it very carefully and trying to hedge both sides and being cautious and very aware of the need to protect client investment money.
And secondly, being cognizant of the fact that we have a very difficult needle to thread going forward in order to chart the most productive, profitable, net worth– the protective path as we can.
We go into the election just a week from now and hopefully it’s a smooth transition.
And I want to point out that I really don’t see a significantly different economic trajectory, regardless of who wins.
And this is my message of politically agnostic. My personal political views really have no place in these reports. My job is to read the economic and financial tea leaves and try to make the best decisions and offer the best advice for all of you. And there are pros and cons to both candidates in terms of what will happen economically and financially. But I don’t really see that much of a big difference. We are in it deep, and it’s going to be an awful lot of shoveling to get us out, regardless of who is wielding the shovel.
And the other thing I wanted to point out is, we will get through this.
It’s a tell it like it is like I see it’s a dark time and there’s going to be a lot a lot of uncertainty and pain to get through it.
But we will get through it. I’m very optimistic and very positive person. This is a very positive country. There’s a world of opportunity and potential in the US economy, the strongest economic engine in the world and the rest of the world.
And we will slog through this and emerge stronger and richer in the end that I have no doubt the important thing, again, is to be careful in the investment decisions with which you entrust us and be careful with your health to get through. I’ll tell you quick story. We had a small family gathering here last weekend with two of my daughters and my grandsons. It’s the mothers and I – that are most sensitive to COVID risk.
And even I became a little complacent, you know, gee whiz, OK, you know, you’ve been to school, whatever, come over. But we can’t allow ourselves to take our eye off of the ball at all. For those of you that have seen the movie Aliens- it’s one of my favorite science fiction movies. Here’s line –natural sanitized a bit.
But he says we can’t afford to let one of those buggers in here stay frosty.
We have to stay vigilant and careful in guarding our health because without that really to mask the rest of it doesn’t matter, does it? And how much money we can make for you, it just doesn’t matter.
So anyway, with that thought, we will get through this, God bless you. Try not to be too disturbed by the near term volatility, because I think we will see a lot more of it. We’ve got our hands on the sheets trying to muscle a sailboat through the storm and I’m confident we’ll get through it victorious.
This post is an edited transcript of the video, Stocks Slump – Reason Is No Mystery, below.
