Our team has been through a lot of market events in the last 20 years and each time feels like a punch to the face. The Coronavirus and Oil shock have delivered two of these punches in succession. It is very difficult to look past the headlines of the day to see that this too shall pass and that we will, at some point in the future, return to normal.
This past week has been a difficult week from a headline news perspective. We realize the coverage of the Coronavirus has been disconcerting both from an economic perspective but also from a human point of view. We all hate uncertainty.
2019 turned out to be a fantastic year in markets but it didn’t feel that way. Why was this the case? How about the US China trade war; the slowest global economic growth since the Great Recession; the never-ending saga known as Brexit; and a U.S. president facing impeachment and an election.
We came across a book recently called, I’m Right and You’re an Idiot, written by James Hoggan. It seemed like just another humorous title fighting for shelf space until we thought a bit more about its insights on the state of public discourse.
Despite having experienced strong market growth this year, we’ve had a fair number of emotional phone calls with investors who are worried about the possibility of a market crash because of Trump, trade, tariff’s, debt levels, social unrest, political unrest, recession and the list goes on.
We hope that everyone is taking the time to enjoy the summer! Within this blog post, we thought we would take a break from markets and the economy.