January 11th, 2021
Dear Client/Prospective Client:
The year 2020 we will never, ever forget. History is being written for our children’s children. The stock market started out strong the first few months and then we entered the pandemic we all now recognize as COVID-19. This carried on through-out the year and several hundreds of thousands of people have now died. That is very tragic, and our hearts go out to those that have become sick or lost loved ones. The good news is several vaccines have been created and begun to be distributed in unprecedented, extremely fast timelines. Mask-wearing has become expected and demanded in most public places by mandate. In youth sports many states are now requiring these young athletes to wear masks during physical activities. Let that resonate for a moment.
If you stayed the course with your investment strategies, the markets came back with a vengeance in 2020 and ended up the year with double-digit growth. That’s quite remarkable considering the events that transpired. Work-from-home (WFH) stocks did very well and led the way along with large technology companies and vaccine-related companies. We expect those very same companies to come back to earth in the first two quarters.
U.S. job growth turned negative for the first time since April with non-farm payrolls for December dropping by 140,000 jobs versus 50,000 jobs added expected and the unemployment rate staying steady at 6.7%. Has anyone been hit harder and hurt more than the restaurant industry? They have been simply decimated with the lockdowns and capacity limitations. Do what you can to help these business owners by ordering takeout and supporting their businesses.
America appears broken. A reported 83 million people voted for a change of leadership and celebrated with electing President Biden and at the same time 76 million people are heartbroken, sad and enraged that there was potential, yet unproven voter fraud in ousting the polarizing President Trump. The world is watching and while we were once looked at as a beacon of hope, we are now looked at similarly as a third world county. Peaceful protests have always been encouraged and allowed. Rioting, looting and violence have never been allowed or encouraged. Minneapolis, MN, Portland, OR and most recently last week, Washington D.C., were the locations of tragic protests and riots in 2020.
Your first amendment right is now being suppressed or censored by Big Tech (Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google). They have decided to be judge and jury for President Trump, his followers and anyone that doesn’t agree with their views. This is un-American. The Ayatollah can have a Twitter account but not President Trump. Really? Twitter has deactivated 4.5 million accounts in the last 48 hours mainly to people on the right. Apple has taken the right-wing social media platform Parler off their app store. Effective at midnight January 10, 2020 Amazon has gotten into the act and said AWS will not host Parler either. Talk about collusion by Big Tech. Where was Big Tech this summer during rioting and looting? When did we become a county that didn’t listen to each other? That’s supposed to be what makes us great! Did we elect Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook or Jeff Bezos? We can’t recall that. Do you? If you’re not concerned, you should be. This will backfire and it should. Big Tech has become this powerful because of our support. What can you do?
As a direct result of these social decisions by Big Tech, we will be exiting Facebook (FB) this week and look at evaluating any others we own. If you have issue with this, please call us to discuss. We don’t take these decisions lightly.
We will be active and conscious with our investment management strategies. We are entering earnings season so this will help set the tone for the first quarter and on. Be safe, be alert and listen intently to what is going on in our world. 2021 will be bumpy so buckle your seatbelts.
Sincerely,
J.B. L’Esperance, ChFC