I hope this finds you and your family healthy,
safe and well! Last Friday, March 27th,
President Trump signed what has become the largest emergency stimulus measure
in our country’s history, a $2.2 trillion package aimed at helping individuals,
families, businesses of all sizes and healthcare facilities impacted by the
virus. Congress acted quickly with legislation
to complement the Federal Reserve’s aggressive efforts on the monetary side. Nearly 900 pages in length, the Coronavirus
Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act will be read and analyzed for
weeks, months and years to come. We
wanted to make you aware of the most notable provisions potentially relevant to
you and your family. Read more
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented volatility in recent weeks that has investors and traders scrambling to assess the economic and market impact of the aggressive containment measures.Read more
I hope this
finds you and your family safe, healthy and doing well! Wow! How
much our lives have changed in a little over a month. Not too terribly long ago we were celebrating
Punxsutawney Phil not seeing his shadow and the potential early onset of Spring. Now, we’re celebrating the warmer weather
being ushered in as hopefully another arrow in our quiver to help to eradicate
a virus that started across the world in Wuhan, China. Read more
I trust that you and your family are safe. Well, we’ve made it through the first few
days of the The President’s Coronavirus
Guidelines For America to slow the spread of the virus. So far so good on this end. Our office continues to operate efficiently,
and everyone on our team has been at home now since Tuesday. We plan to continue to work this way until it
is no longer needed. We are fully
functioning via phone, video conference and social media should you want to
connect. Let’s share a few links going
into the weekend that may help you manage all of this stay-at-homeness. Have a great weekend! Take care, Tim Read more
We rolled out our Road to Recovery Playbook at the start of the week to help investors gauge where the market is in its bottoming process. The first and most important piece of that playbook—visibility into a peak in new COVID-19 cases—remains elusive, but we hope to have a clearer picture with the next couple of weeks as containment efforts have more time to work. We continue to monitor cases daily and plan to update you on that progress regularly during this crisis.Read more
Part of our communication protocol is to reach out to you when the equity markets enter bear market status – down more than 20% at closing from a previously established high. We did that near the end of last week on both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500. You will note that we sent a similar communication when we entered correction territory (down 10%) on February 28th. The S&P 500 needed only 16 days to go from a new all-time high, on February 19th, to a bear market, resetting the previous record of 28 days.
You may be wondering why it’s called a bear market. The term bear market gets its name from the way a bear attacks its prey, swiping its paws downward. Similarly, the bull market, an upward trending market with an absence of a 20% decline, gets its name from the way a bull attacks, thrusting its horns into the air. The present bear market brought to an end the longest bull market in history at just over 11 years, almost to the day. And here’s the kicker… both bull and bear markets are arbitrary, made-up numbers to fit nicely in a box so we can understand them. To me, the decline we experienced from September to December of 2018, down 19.8%, sure felt like a bear market, although it did not technically qualify. And, neither did April to December of 2011, when the equity markets fell 19.4%. At this point, the definitions are irrelevant. The fact is the markets are down and so are our accounts.Read more
The dizzying volatility over the past few weeks has left all of our heads spinning as we wait for containment efforts in the United States and elsewhere to help slow new cases of COVID-19 (coronavirus). Public health is of course our primary concern. But beyond that, from an economic and market perspective, there are many difficult but important questions:Read more
I
hope you and your family are well!
Yesterday, March 9th, was the eleventh anniversary of the final
bottoming process of the bear market from 2007 to 2009. How ironic that the world elected to
celebrate this iconic anniversary with, you guessed it, another panic attack.Read more
Waiting in a winding airport security checkpoint line is just one of many
potential headaches today’s travelers experience. Worrying about what to pack,
what kind of identification is required, and how much cash to bring are yet
others. In order to help ease the stress level before and during your next
trip, it might help to review some guidance from the officials who oversee our
nation’s travel rules and regulations.Read more
Benjamin
Franklin once quoted, “Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy,
wealthy, and wise”—but the key to good health (and good financial health)
involves far more than just getting enough sleep.1 For most
people, health and finances are inextricably linked, and a deficit in one can
quickly cause the other to suffer. Learn more about how your health and
wellness can affect your financial situation, as well as some ways to help
boost both your health and your
bank account.Read more
