In 1960, an all-girl rock-and-roll group called ‘The Shirelles’ had a number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 single chart titled: “Will you love me tomorrow”. That reminds me of a very nice email our office received recently.
The email came from a client whom our office has worked with for several decades. It said, in part – “We received our statements yesterday. Our investments seem to be making some nice gains. Thank you for your expertise and careful watch over our portfolio. We appreciate all you do.”
It's easy to thank someone when there’s good news; but the hard work often isn’t seen when times are more difficult and the numbers don’t appear so favorable.
Do you remember March of 2020? The Dow Jones entered a bear market for the first time in 11 years, falling from all-time highs, when it was approaching almost 30,000 points and then it fell to under 19,000 points in just a few short weeks due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The turn-a-round from that market fall was unusually quick, with a recovery that lasted just five months. That’s not normal.
Look what we’ve already forgotten about our recent past bear markets:
Remember the bear market that began in 2007? It took forty-nine months to recover from that bear. That’s a little over four years!
Or how about the bear market that began in the year 2000. That recovery took fifty-six months! That’s over four and a half years!
Making the gains back in those indexes took a lot of time; but the real pain was in the amount of the drops those indexes experienced. The S&P Saw a decline in 2020 of thirty-four percent, in 2007 - a negative fifty-six percent and in 2000 a drop of forty-nine percent. For index investors, that was a painful time, because they were simply along for the ride.
Our job is to always be forward thinkers. During good times, we don’t get overly excited because we are always watchful of what the future holds, and during bad times, we have to be focused on working toward weathering the storms.
We’re here to celebrate the good times and to hold your hand and help you focus during the bad; so, no matter what life brings, we hope that you will still love us tomorrow.
