Greetings Clients and Friends:

Since I wrote last week, year-to-date losses in the S&P 500 Index of large US company stocks have fallen back from 28% to 21% on the Senate’s passage of the largest fiscal stimulus bill in US history and unprecedented monetary policy firepower deployed by the Federal Reserve. Our balanced, growth and aggressive portfolios are down 11%, 16% and 19% year-to-date respectively.

Last week over 3.28 million people in the U.S. filed for unemployment, and the United States now leads the world in known cases of COVID-19. The situations in hospitals across the nation are deteriorating rapidly. Investors struggle to accurately price the unknown length and severity of the medical and financial crisis. We anticipate more volatility ahead.

I have been saddened and angered by our health crisis since I read and circulated the March 11th article on the situation in Italian hospitals.  I didn’t want us to live through the same horrors. I am grateful to our courageous health care providers, grocery store workers, and the plumber who got the dishwasher working again.

My anguish and sense of uncertainty does not extend to my work managing your assets. Chief Allocation Strategist Steve Bobo and I remain confident that your assets (and ours) will recover and grow and finance your long-term goals.

Our process works.  Our foundation of low-cost index funds gives us exposure to global stocks and bonds. We modestly tilt our holdings and carefully select active strategies to limit risk from identified imbalances and take advantage of mispriced opportunities.  These base portfolios are designed to protect and grow our assets through multiple scenarios over our lives. With a long-term strategy, adjusted incrementally and dispassionately, we patiently motor through the sunshine and storms, rebalancing to benefit from the investments that have appreciated in value as well as the investments that have declined.

We will get through this difficult time, just as our money has emerged from past crises, seemingly unaffected, as if the challenges had never occurred.

Please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,

John