Don’t Budge

Boy, can you make folks feel what you feel inside?
‘Cause if you’re big star bound let me warn ya, 
It’s a long, hard ride…

The Ride - David Allan Coe

The quote above comes from a song called “The Ride.”

Reminds me, even after 39 years in this business, that nothing of value comes easy.

The journey is a teacher: the trip up the mountain, the potholes, the base camps, the rest stops – and yes, even the backtracking. It requires faith, belief, discipline, and patience to complete.

The same goes for building towards your wealth goals. The time you spend doesn’t wear you down. It makes you better.

But it can be a long, hard ride. And those base camps (rest stops) can cause you to think you have to “adjust” or change.

I was reading the stats of a widely held ETF over the weekend. It has 276 positions in it with a turnover ratio of 66% per annum. That suggests the managers “investment time horizon” is roughly 4 months. Just 120 days as an average holding period.

Sorry folks, but that’s not investing. That’s trading. The two are like night and day.

Consider the following as if you’d never heard of Covid before:

“Important news. We have just become aware that a virus will arrive on our shores in the next six weeks. It will end up being tagged as the reason for nearly 4MM deaths worldwide. It will cause an undefinable amount of political, human, and financial strife. We will be told it is overwhelming our healthcare systems and you will be ordered to stay at home. A global lockdown will effectively follow shortly – and the market will fall 30% or so in a matter of 20 trade sessions. Say goodbye to summer because we won’t have one. IN fact, we will be lucky to “come back outside” before the end of 2020. Yesterday’s normal will never return. Trillions of dollars in debt will be created globally to rescue businesses where possible, and to fund people’s needs so they can exist until the virus departs.”

Now, while the above happened a series of events unfolded and ran parallel to this disaster. Markets did fall 30% in March and April, and then they doubled in the following 15 months. Hundreds of thousands of businesses closed their doors and millions of people lost their jobs, as more new companies and businesses launched in the US than in any other year in our history. Fifteen months later there was a record-shattering numbers of jobs to fill – and not enough humans to fill them.

Eh, no. Robots need to arrive to build the growth curve ahead, and far faster than most may be comfortable with. Earnings will skyrocket and set all-time highs. 2021 will put analysts so far behind in their understanding of the complete remake of all business structures that they will miss expectations by over 90%. We will see companies make hundreds of billions of dollars more in profits for 2021 than they saw in 2019. By Q3 2021, the explosive growth that will be unleashed by the pandemic’s shutdown forces will be setting the stage for S&P 500 levels of 5,800 to 6,000 by 2025-2026 or so.

Do not budge.

And be ready for the next monster to be welcomed onto the media’s stage.

The past is full of them:

• The Great Depression (FYI - the Dow Jones was at 27)
• The Oil Embargo of the mid-70s; The Recession of 1980-1982
• The Crash – October 19, 1987
• The Commercial Real Estate Collapse Recession of Early 90s – 1500 Banks and S&Ls lost
• The Tech Bubble Bear Market and Recession of 2000-2003
• The 9/11 Terrorist Attacks – and 20 Years of War After
• The Great Recession – 2008-2009
• “Brexit”
• The 2020 Pandemic…
• and on and on and on

Today, 93 years since the Great Depression of 1929, after all those monsters the Dow Jones now stands at 34,800.

We are once again at record highs.

Have a look at the video here - www.trubeginnings.com

Stay calm.

Pray for more setbacks!