5 Stories That Got Us To Now

Markets are poised to finish the week mostly flat, as negative news of surging COVID-19 cases is met with positive developments related to potential vaccines. The markets have continued to be resilient since the recent bottom on March 23rd in spite of negative economic data. The last 4 months have been a classic case of markets “climbing the wall of worry.” There is no lack of uncertainty on the economic, health, and political fronts, however, we continue to stress that time in the market, not market timing, is the correct long-term equity strategy.

Below are the topics for this weekend’s reading.

Here We Are: 5 Stories That Got Us To Now (Morgan Housel)

Morgan dives into the political, social, health, and economic struggles the country currently faces to attempt to understand the key drivers to throughout our history contributing to the current state of affairs. He focuses on the following 5 trends. We highly recommend reading the entire article. It is very good.

1. People grew apart financially at the same time they became connected digitally, which exacerbates tribal instincts and exposes you to people who don’t see the world as you do, who become easy targets for criticism and blame.

2. A century-long shift away from labor-intensive jobs towards creative-thinking jobs creates a stark contrast between jobs that can be done during a pandemic and jobs that can’t.

3. Things have been pretty good for a long time. So a setback, even if it’s not unprecedented, feels overwhelming.

4. Local news gave way to national news which gave way to global news, which can make the world feel perpetually broken because there is always a tragedy somewhere, and now you are guaranteed to hear about it.

5. The Federal Reserve learned how to keep the financial system from falling apart. That’s both kept a lot of the economy humming and ruined a lot of assumptions people had about how the economy works.

Timeline Accelerates for COVID-19 Drug Development (Morningstar)

This is an informative article on the current treatment and vaccine landscape for COVID-19. Morningstar details 7 potential vaccines in various stages of trial and development. Each vaccine is estimated to, based upon approval, begin manufacturing and distribution in the next 3-12 months. Obviously, the doses will have to be in the billions to treat the global population, and the manufacturing feat required to accomplish that level of dosage is substantial. However, it appears we are currently on track to have effective vaccines before the end of next year.

We hope everyone has a happy and safe weekend. Please give us a call if you have any questions.

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