March 14, 2025 • 35 mins
With this week marking five years since Covid related shutdowns,
Chris Boyd, Jeff Perry, and Russ Ball begin this episode with reminiscing of where they
were five years ago and sharing the related personal and financial lessons. The trio
explores the similarities of current stock market movements with the recent tariff policy
to the uncertainty caused by Covid. The value of working with a financial advisor during
turbulent times is discussed, including financial and behavioral consideration. Chris
closes out the segment explaining why having a comprehensive financial plan is critical
to long-term financial success.
For more information or to reach Chris Boyd or Jeff Perry, click the following link:
https://www.wealthenhancement.com/s/advisor-teams/amr
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Something More with Chris Boyd.
Chris Boyd is a Certified Financial Planner Practitioner
and Senior Vice President and Financial Advisor at
Wealth Enhancement Group, one of the nation's largest
registered investment advisors.
We call it Something More because we'd like
to talk not only about those important dollar
and cents issues, but also the quality of
life issues that make the money matters matter.
(00:22):
Here he is, your fulfillment facilitator, your partner
in prosperity, advising clients on Cape Cod and
across the country.
Here's your host, Jay Christopher Boyd.
Thanks for being with us for the Something
More with Chris Boyd show.
You know, I was thinking it's been 17,
almost 18 years that we've been doing this
(00:43):
show.
We've seen a lot of market conditions along
the way when we started out.
It was even before the problems of the
financial crisis.
We helped our audience kind of navigate some
of the challenges going through that.
(01:05):
But more recently, by the way, everybody, I'm
joined with Jeff Perry and Russ Ball of
the AMR team from Wealth Enhancement Group.
Guys, I was thinking it's just about five
years since the pandemic hit.
And I thought maybe we just take a
moment to do a little bit of retrospective,
(01:28):
but also maybe to try to take a
moment to derive some lessons from extreme experiences
that come along in the markets.
I know we have a lot of clients
and listeners who are probably a little bit
anxious as markets have been quite volatile in
the last several weeks.
(01:49):
And maybe there's some opportunities to draw some
lessons from other experiences as well.
Let me just start by saying, I'd be
interested in hearing from you guys where you
were.
What was that song, When the World Stopped
Turning?
Essentially, I was thinking about how Kristen and
(02:14):
I were out with friends on the weekend
where we were at a show in Boston
with hundreds of our closest...
No, I'm kidding.
Hundreds of people in this theater in Boston
at one minute and out at restaurants and
(02:35):
things.
And within just a few days, everything started
closing down.
The athletics, professional teams, the basketball...
I remember the basketball teams particularly, where it
was like, they're not having games anymore.
I think there were some...
There was a basketball player who...
I forget which one that had COVID was
(02:57):
still...
And then they were like, oh, isolation.
And then all this kind of thing.
It was like, then the whole team got
it, this kind of thing.
So they said, all right, no one's gonna...
They weren't gonna play.
And then New York City seemed like the
hotbed of...
In the United States, there was a couple
of boats off the coast that had some
(03:18):
people that they were quarantined.
They weren't able to land and then dock
or whatever.
And then it was this thing, we're not
gonna let it into our country kind of
mindset.
And long and behold, I'm sure it was
already here.
We just didn't know it.
(03:38):
My son lived in New York City at
the time.
And we said, it sounds like things are
gonna shut down soon.
Why don't I come and get you?
We don't know how long it's gonna be.
Why don't you hang out here on the
Cape instead of being in the city with
who knows what going on?
(04:00):
And maybe it'd be safer kind of mindset.
So I remember driving down to New York
on highways that were just desolate.
Nobody was out.
And the world had stopped at this point.
It was crazy.
And the easiest drive I ever had going
to and from New York City.
(04:23):
But in any case, tell me what you
guys remember where you were.
Who wants to go first?
Jeff, I remember it very well because two
important things were happening in my world on
March 13th, five years to the day.
(04:45):
We were selling our house that we had
for many years in downtown Sandwich.
So we had a closing that day.
And I walked into Doug Cabral's office.
Doug's been a guest on the show because
he's handling the closing for the buyers.
And that morning was the morning, as you
indicated, Chris, that things started to get serious.
(05:09):
We were hearing more substantial news and possible
shutdown.
So we were all talking like, should we
be using different pens?
Should we be in the same room?
And it was just kind of joking conversation
at the moment.
An eerie awareness though, right?
That's right.
Something had changed that day for me.
(05:31):
That's when I noticed it at that closing.
And then, so we had the closing.
And I was leaving the closing, calling my
son, because I had just heard we had
tickets to the Celtics game that night.
Another thing you mentioned.
I had just heard that our game was
the first game that was canceled.
(05:52):
So I was calling him to tell him.
And so, yeah, it seems like a lot
longer than five years ago.
That's amazing, right?
Yeah.
I remember it was funny.
We had a client in maybe January of
that year who had said, there's this crazy
(06:16):
thing going on in China and I'm really
nervous.
I want to pull everything out.
And I was like, are you sure?
That seems kind of crazy.
Maybe that's extreme.
I didn't say crazy, of course.
But I said, oh, that's extreme.
What are the odds?
This kind of thing.
So she did, she pulled everything out.
Of course, genius, right?
(06:36):
On the other hand- Did she put
it back?
She never put it back in.
She missed out on a lot anyway.
We'll come back and talk about markets.
Yeah.
That's a good subject to talk about.
But it was at this point that you're
talking about, maybe just before this, that as
a team, we started talking about, well, what
(06:57):
if this really does evolve into something that
there seems to be this growing concern around?
How should we be navigating that?
And so I think one of the things
we want to talk about in a few
minutes is just how did we, what might
we derive from this?
(07:17):
Got some lessons.
But I want to hear about Russ.
Russ, you lived in New York City, didn't
you?
Yeah.
I was in New York City at the
time.
And I remember in probably about December of
the previous year, I was reading about COVID.
It was way at the bottom of the
news app.
It was like, oh, by the way, there's
a virus in China.
And I remember reading it and thinking, oh,
(07:39):
that's, I had an eerie feeling about it.
And I started following it from that point.
And I was up in Spain.
I remember it was like, it was kind
of moving around the world a little bit.
Exactly.
And I think it was around that time,
probably like January or maybe February, I started
buying, I was an early adopter of masks
(08:02):
on the subway.
And I was, you know, people were looking
at me like I was crazy.
I was trying to convince my girlfriend to
wear a mask.
Because it was only like, at that time,
you only saw people from Asia in airports,
wearing masks, I think, prior to this.
It was unusual.
But they had bird flu.
And they had been through some of these
kind of things before in other parts of
(08:23):
the world where they had grown accustomed maybe
to masks and so forth.
Right.
Right.
And so I was definitely an outlier in
the subway.
My girlfriend was trying to get as far
away from me as she could.
And you hadn't gotten it until just recently.
Exactly.
Exactly.
I was extremely cautious.
So in any case, I was following what
(08:44):
was going on.
And I was watching pretty closely when you
start hearing about these cases in the city,
like doubling, tripling overnight.
And similar to Jeff, I was out at
a show at Radio City.
I think it was like a Thursday night.
And, you know, pretty big crowd in the
audience.
No one really seemed to miss the show
(09:05):
because of all this stuff that was going
on.
But next day, they shut down Broadway.
And I was like, OK, that's a pretty
good sign that things are escalating here.
So I sounded the alarm bells for my
family.
And I was like, let's all get in
the car.
Let's get out of the city.
Let's start there.
My dad always had this thing about, you
(09:27):
know, getting trapped in Manhattan if there was
ever any kind of emergency, if they shut
the bridges down.
So I was like, let's get let's get
in New Jersey.
Went to my grandma's house in Jersey and
hunkered down with her for about a week.
As things started escalating, you start hearing these
horror stories in New York City that, you
know, the hospitals were getting overrun pretty quickly.
(09:47):
There were these crazy stories about at the
time.
I was obsessed with the news and the
New York Times app page that I was
on the app, but they have on their
website some details about tracking COVID in various
locations by counties.
You know, I became obsessed with that stuff
(10:10):
because there were these horror stories about people
who just would die these horrible deaths with
they couldn't breathe, you know, with the ventilators
and all this.
And remember how ventilators were at a premium
and they're just there were not enough of
them and the hospitals were being overrun.
(10:34):
And then it was like, well, should you
go?
Should you stay home?
It's just unclear what to do.
And I remember in those early days with
makeshift masks, we didn't have the masks that
you were an early adopter for.
So we were getting cloth masks.
It was just something, you know, and then
going to the grocery stores, wiping down every
(10:57):
box that came home.
It was like, it was just segregating packages.
And yeah, the most memorable thing that followed
was my mom was in an assisted living
and I went to visit her one day
and couldn't get in doors are locked and
no visitors.
And my mom lived in a continuing care
(11:19):
retirement, independent living, and they too were isolated
because of course it was the elderly who
were the most susceptible to having other issues
that that became the most prone to being
(11:39):
hit hardest by COVID.
You know, I remember thinking to, you know,
when you saw those, you were talking about
the hospitals being overrun and then they had
these refrigerated trucks with just the huge number
of deaths and they didn't have ability to
deal with it all.
It was just, and then he couldn't have
(12:00):
a funeral.
I'm sure you all knew people who died
from COVID.
My mom died with COVID.
She had so many other things, but we
were not able to have a public funeral.
We just had a family gathering, you know,
at the cemetery and so much was changing.
(12:21):
And along with all that, you know, nervousness
and concern in the world, the market started
to.
Yeah.
I remember my aunt Rita died in that
time.
My wife's cousin who was, you know, similar
in age died.
You know, so definitely I think everybody at
(12:43):
some point had some connection to loss related
to COVID.
Yeah.
No family, unfortunately, but there were a couple
of people in our building that we were
close to that passed away prior to the
realization of what was even going on.
It was like some kind of crazy pneumonia.
I think we had a client who died
(13:04):
of that.
I really wonder if it was.
Yeah.
So in any case yeah.
So there was, and I will say one
of the things that I also think about
and associated with COVID was this sudden shift
where everything shut down and we closed the
(13:24):
office.
We worked with people.
Suddenly we're adopting virtual meetings and technology that
previously we weren't inclined to do.
Clients like coming in in person.
But in the midst of this, it opened
up the door of everyone worked remotely.
Brian was commuting from Boston three days a
(13:46):
week to the Cape.
I'm sure he was happy that we adopted
virtual stuff.
He didn't have to come after that.
All of a sudden everybody knew the word
Zoom.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
It has changed business and business travel meaningfully.
(14:09):
I don't think conferences are ever back to
what they were previously, but yeah, there's this
notion that for a time life slowed down,
which there are times I missed that aspect.
(14:30):
I don't miss any of the other stuff,
but I did like the fact that we
worked from home and we had family nearby.
We took walks and we were out, got
fresh air a little bit with for just
because we were crazy.
You weren't driving anywhere.
You weren't doing anything.
But for working from home, I did the
(14:51):
show from my dining room table with all
our equipment.
Anyway, I think there are some lessons to
come out of that.
Sometimes it's good to slow down a little
bit because we're in such a rat race.
Yeah.
There are other lessons that we want to
(15:14):
derive from that experience.
Let's talk about those stuff.
You started to go there with the financial
story.
Well, I think we can agree that COVID
and the chaos and the uncertainty, I guess,
that followed the recognition of what was happening
was a driver of a market decline in
April of 2020, shortly after the time period
(15:36):
we're talking about.
In effect, the government said, hey, it's not
safe.
Stay home.
But if everyone's staying home, there are people
who don't have paychecks coming in and companies
were going to likely fail.
So there was all kinds of measures, extraordinary
(15:58):
measures to try to help individuals to have
income and companies to be able to keep
afloat and maybe keep up with some payroll
and the like.
There were loans.
(16:19):
People had to pay back loans for employees.
There was all types of government intervention.
But the markets, the financial markets, were worried
about the revenue of corporations and how this
was going to play out.
Things dropped starkly in the face of, hey,
the world has stopped.
The world has stopped.
(16:39):
And will that mean profitability stops?
And therefore, is there going to be any
revenue?
Well, I think in times like those, it's
hard to keep your perspective on things.
The idea that Brian would talk about the
idea that earnings aren't a single year when
(17:01):
it comes to stock value.
It's not based on a single moment in
time.
It's based on projected over many years.
How does this play out?
But of course, you have the uncertainty of,
well, what's changing?
What does that mean?
How will it play out?
I think that's the key word there, Chris,
is uncertainty.
Corporations and markets adjust to things.
And maybe we're going to talk about this.
(17:22):
I'll just tease it now.
Go for it.
Let's do it.
It's kind of uncertain in the market right
now.
The uncertainty isn't a pandemic.
The uncertainty is economic and political.
And to it, specifically, tariffs.
The market isn't sure what's happening with tariffs.
And it makes the market unstable and uncertain.
(17:44):
And that usually means a downward trend, in
my opinion, when the market and corporations are
uncertain about how they're going to be able
to do business or what the rules of
doing business are.
Taxes, in this case, tariffs.
We tend to see a downward trend, especially
the market had been good and is good
(18:07):
now or was good.
So there's some analogy between then and now,
even though it's a different subject.
When we came out of 2019, we were
dealing with a great wind at our back,
a solid year in the markets.
And then suddenly you have this disruption.
(18:30):
I think what you have to take away
from that experience and perhaps the analogy in
the midst of what's going on now is
good investors are the ones that take advantage
of opportunity.
The impulse that people have oftentimes is to
(18:51):
say, I'm going to get more defensive as
a consequence of anxiety.
And the best investors say, what opportunities is
this creating for me to take advantage of
as a long-term investor?
And I think that's the mindset we need
to be interpreting as investors.
(19:12):
When things are feeling perhaps a bit excessive,
we get a little more defensive, which is
what our firm had done on the edges
in 2019.
So as it turned out, not anticipating the
pandemic, but just feeling like things were a
little bit overpriced, we were better positioned to
(19:35):
not feel it as fully as some people
might have.
Similarly, I think when we look at going
into this year, our team strategies for our
clientele, the discretionary strategies we manage for our
clientele, we've been recognizing that for those most
(19:55):
conservative investors, well, there's a little bit of
excess in the price of the market, the
multiples that people were paying for certain parts
of the market.
So there was an opportunity to be a
little bit more defensive, which we were.
That's been good in the sense of what's
going on around us.
(20:17):
And what we need to think about, whether
we're a moderate or aggressive investor or a
conservative or preservation-minded investor, is in the
midst of these changes, as markets become a
little bit more volatile, valuations readjust, does that
(20:38):
create opportunities?
And I think that's one thing I will
say to give Brian Regan some credit for
our team.
In the 2020 environment, he had great insights
in the way he was thinking about things,
which I was very appreciative at that time.
(20:59):
It kept us in perspective of opportunities that
were being created, whether it was in treasuries
or in municipals or even high yield exposure,
there was opportunity with less risk than maybe
stock-like returns, but maybe not stock-like
risk.
Similarly, when it came to our stock exposure,
(21:21):
there were certain sectors we wanted to reimagine
how we wanted to be positioned in, given
where there was greater disruption, there was greater
opportunity.
So these are things we need to kind
of take to heart in challenging times, when
the inclination, the temptation is to say, you
(21:45):
know, arms in the air, run for the
hills, you know, like we want to be
inclined to increase our cash, you know, hey,
let's do something.
You know, that notion, don't just sit there,
do something.
We want to take the option and say,
don't just do something, sit there.
(22:05):
We've already, with our client's strategies, had the
opportunity to be a little bit proactive on
some of these considerations.
And that doesn't mean there isn't disruption.
When markets move, everybody feels it.
If you have stock, you feel it.
But, you know, to what extent?
(22:26):
And does that create some room for opportunities
to be benefited for, as we look longer
term ahead?
I don't know, what's that?
This conversation reminds me of something that we
talk about from time to time.
It's probably 10 years old now, but the
Vanguard study, who did an assessment of the
(22:50):
value of working with a financial advisor who
has your best interest at heart, and, you
know, who's doing these things every day, is
aware of history, aware of patterns, aware of
the ups and downs, and, you know, is
going to be less impacted by some of
the emotional things that happen.
Because we know that a majority of investors,
(23:10):
this isn't just our opinion, this has been
studied, the majority investors, when the stock market's
roaring to record highs, say, get me some
of that.
I want in.
I want in.
And when the market is down with a
correction or even in a bear market, people
say, get me out of this.
I don't want to lose more money.
And what this Vanguard study showed is that
(23:34):
when you work with an advisor who has
the tolerance, who has the experience, who has
the wisdom that you've been describing, Chris, back
in 2020, or today, even,
Welcome to Something More with Chris Boyd.
Chris Boyd is a Certified Financial Planner Practitioner
and Senior Vice President and Financial Advisor at
Wealth Enhancement Group, one of the nation's largest
registered investment advisors.
We call it Something More because we'd like
to talk not only about those important dollar
and cents issues, but also the quality of
life issues that make the money matters matter.
(00:22):
Here he is, your fulfillment facilitator, your partner
in prosperity, advising clients on Cape Cod and
across the country.
Here's your host, Jay Christopher Boyd.
Thanks for being with us for the Something
More with Chris Boyd show.
You know, I was thinking it's been 17,
almost 18 years that we've been doing this
(00:43):
show.
We've seen a lot of market conditions along
the way when we started out.
It was even before the problems of the
financial crisis.
We helped our audience kind of navigate some
of the challenges going through that.
(01:05):
But more recently, by the way, everybody, I'm
joined with Jeff Perry and Russ Ball of
the AMR team from Wealth Enhancement Group.
Guys, I was thinking it's just about five
years since the pandemic hit.
And I thought maybe we just take a
moment to do a little bit of retrospective,
(01:28):
but also maybe to try to take a
moment to derive some lessons from extreme experiences
that come along in the markets.
I know we have a lot of clients
and listeners who are probably a little bit
anxious as markets have been quite volatile in
the last several weeks.
(01:49):
And maybe there's some opportunities to draw some
lessons from other experiences as well.
Let me just start by saying, I'd be
interested in hearing from you guys where you
were.
What was that song, When the World Stopped
Turning?
Essentially, I was thinking about how Kristen and
(02:14):
I were out with friends on the weekend
where we were at a show in Boston
with hundreds of our closest...
No, I'm kidding.
Hundreds of people in this theater in Boston
at one minute and out at restaurants and
(02:35):
things.
And within just a few days, everything started
closing down.
The athletics, professional teams, the basketball...
I remember the basketball teams particularly, where it
was like, they're not having games anymore.
I think there were some...
There was a basketball player who...
I forget which one that had COVID was
(02:57):
still...
And then they were like, oh, isolation.
And then all this kind of thing.
It was like, then the whole team got
it, this kind of thing.
So they said, all right, no one's gonna...
They weren't gonna play.
And then New York City seemed like the
hotbed of...
In the United States, there was a couple
of boats off the coast that had some
(03:18):
people that they were quarantined.
They weren't able to land and then dock
or whatever.
And then it was this thing, we're not
gonna let it into our country kind of
mindset.
And long and behold, I'm sure it was
already here.
We just didn't know it.
(03:38):
My son lived in New York City at
the time.
And we said, it sounds like things are
gonna shut down soon.
Why don't I come and get you?
We don't know how long it's gonna be.
Why don't you hang out here on the
Cape instead of being in the city with
who knows what going on?
(04:00):
And maybe it'd be safer kind of mindset.
So I remember driving down to New York
on highways that were just desolate.
Nobody was out.
And the world had stopped at this point.
It was crazy.
And the easiest drive I ever had going
to and from New York City.
(04:23):
But in any case, tell me what you
guys remember where you were.
Who wants to go first?
Jeff, I remember it very well because two
important things were happening in my world on
March 13th, five years to the day.
(04:45):
We were selling our house that we had
for many years in downtown Sandwich.
So we had a closing that day.
And I walked into Doug Cabral's office.
Doug's been a guest on the show because
he's handling the closing for the buyers.
And that morning was the morning, as you
indicated, Chris, that things started to get serious.
(05:09):
We were hearing more substantial news and possible
shutdown.
So we were all talking like, should we
be using different pens?
Should we be in the same room?
And it was just kind of joking conversation
at the moment.
An eerie awareness though, right?
That's right.
Something had changed that day for me.
(05:31):
That's when I noticed it at that closing.
And then, so we had the closing.
And I was leaving the closing, calling my
son, because I had just heard we had
tickets to the Celtics game that night.
Another thing you mentioned.
I had just heard that our game was
the first game that was canceled.
(05:52):
So I was calling him to tell him.
And so, yeah, it seems like a lot
longer than five years ago.
That's amazing, right?
Yeah.
I remember it was funny.
We had a client in maybe January of
that year who had said, there's this crazy
(06:16):
thing going on in China and I'm really
nervous.
I want to pull everything out.
And I was like, are you sure?
That seems kind of crazy.
Maybe that's extreme.
I didn't say crazy, of course.
But I said, oh, that's extreme.
What are the odds?
This kind of thing.
So she did, she pulled everything out.
Of course, genius, right?
(06:36):
On the other hand- Did she put
it back?
She never put it back in.
She missed out on a lot anyway.
We'll come back and talk about markets.
Yeah.
That's a good subject to talk about.
But it was at this point that you're
talking about, maybe just before this, that as
a team, we started talking about, well, what
(06:57):
if this really does evolve into something that
there seems to be this growing concern around?
How should we be navigating that?
And so I think one of the things
we want to talk about in a few
minutes is just how did we, what might
we derive from this?
(07:17):
Got some lessons.
But I want to hear about Russ.
Russ, you lived in New York City, didn't
you?
Yeah.
I was in New York City at the
time.
And I remember in probably about December of
the previous year, I was reading about COVID.
It was way at the bottom of the
news app.
It was like, oh, by the way, there's
a virus in China.
And I remember reading it and thinking, oh,
(07:39):
that's, I had an eerie feeling about it.
And I started following it from that point.
And I was up in Spain.
I remember it was like, it was kind
of moving around the world a little bit.
Exactly.
And I think it was around that time,
probably like January or maybe February, I started
buying, I was an early adopter of masks
(08:02):
on the subway.
And I was, you know, people were looking
at me like I was crazy.
I was trying to convince my girlfriend to
wear a mask.
Because it was only like, at that time,
you only saw people from Asia in airports,
wearing masks, I think, prior to this.
It was unusual.
But they had bird flu.
And they had been through some of these
kind of things before in other parts of
(08:23):
the world where they had grown accustomed maybe
to masks and so forth.
Right.
Right.
And so I was definitely an outlier in
the subway.
My girlfriend was trying to get as far
away from me as she could.
And you hadn't gotten it until just recently.
Exactly.
Exactly.
I was extremely cautious.
So in any case, I was following what
(08:44):
was going on.
And I was watching pretty closely when you
start hearing about these cases in the city,
like doubling, tripling overnight.
And similar to Jeff, I was out at
a show at Radio City.
I think it was like a Thursday night.
And, you know, pretty big crowd in the
audience.
No one really seemed to miss the show
(09:05):
because of all this stuff that was going
on.
But next day, they shut down Broadway.
And I was like, OK, that's a pretty
good sign that things are escalating here.
So I sounded the alarm bells for my
family.
And I was like, let's all get in
the car.
Let's get out of the city.
Let's start there.
My dad always had this thing about, you
(09:27):
know, getting trapped in Manhattan if there was
ever any kind of emergency, if they shut
the bridges down.
So I was like, let's get let's get
in New Jersey.
Went to my grandma's house in Jersey and
hunkered down with her for about a week.
As things started escalating, you start hearing these
horror stories in New York City that, you
know, the hospitals were getting overrun pretty quickly.
(09:47):
There were these crazy stories about at the
time.
I was obsessed with the news and the
New York Times app page that I was
on the app, but they have on their
website some details about tracking COVID in various
locations by counties.
You know, I became obsessed with that stuff
(10:10):
because there were these horror stories about people
who just would die these horrible deaths with
they couldn't breathe, you know, with the ventilators
and all this.
And remember how ventilators were at a premium
and they're just there were not enough of
them and the hospitals were being overrun.
(10:34):
And then it was like, well, should you
go?
Should you stay home?
It's just unclear what to do.
And I remember in those early days with
makeshift masks, we didn't have the masks that
you were an early adopter for.
So we were getting cloth masks.
It was just something, you know, and then
going to the grocery stores, wiping down every
(10:57):
box that came home.
It was like, it was just segregating packages.
And yeah, the most memorable thing that followed
was my mom was in an assisted living
and I went to visit her one day
and couldn't get in doors are locked and
no visitors.
And my mom lived in a continuing care
(11:19):
retirement, independent living, and they too were isolated
because of course it was the elderly who
were the most susceptible to having other issues
that that became the most prone to being
(11:39):
hit hardest by COVID.
You know, I remember thinking to, you know,
when you saw those, you were talking about
the hospitals being overrun and then they had
these refrigerated trucks with just the huge number
of deaths and they didn't have ability to
deal with it all.
It was just, and then he couldn't have
(12:00):
a funeral.
I'm sure you all knew people who died
from COVID.
My mom died with COVID.
She had so many other things, but we
were not able to have a public funeral.
We just had a family gathering, you know,
at the cemetery and so much was changing.
(12:21):
And along with all that, you know, nervousness
and concern in the world, the market started
to.
Yeah.
I remember my aunt Rita died in that
time.
My wife's cousin who was, you know, similar
in age died.
You know, so definitely I think everybody at
(12:43):
some point had some connection to loss related
to COVID.
Yeah.
No family, unfortunately, but there were a couple
of people in our building that we were
close to that passed away prior to the
realization of what was even going on.
It was like some kind of crazy pneumonia.
I think we had a client who died
(13:04):
of that.
I really wonder if it was.
Yeah.
So in any case yeah.
So there was, and I will say one
of the things that I also think about
and associated with COVID was this sudden shift
where everything shut down and we closed the
(13:24):
office.
We worked with people.
Suddenly we're adopting virtual meetings and technology that
previously we weren't inclined to do.
Clients like coming in in person.
But in the midst of this, it opened
up the door of everyone worked remotely.
Brian was commuting from Boston three days a
(13:46):
week to the Cape.
I'm sure he was happy that we adopted
virtual stuff.
He didn't have to come after that.
All of a sudden everybody knew the word
Zoom.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
It has changed business and business travel meaningfully.
(14:09):
I don't think conferences are ever back to
what they were previously, but yeah, there's this
notion that for a time life slowed down,
which there are times I missed that aspect.
(14:30):
I don't miss any of the other stuff,
but I did like the fact that we
worked from home and we had family nearby.
We took walks and we were out, got
fresh air a little bit with for just
because we were crazy.
You weren't driving anywhere.
You weren't doing anything.
But for working from home, I did the
(14:51):
show from my dining room table with all
our equipment.
Anyway, I think there are some lessons to
come out of that.
Sometimes it's good to slow down a little
bit because we're in such a rat race.
Yeah.
There are other lessons that we want to
(15:14):
derive from that experience.
Let's talk about those stuff.
You started to go there with the financial
story.
Well, I think we can agree that COVID
and the chaos and the uncertainty, I guess,
that followed the recognition of what was happening
was a driver of a market decline in
April of 2020, shortly after the time period
(15:36):
we're talking about.
In effect, the government said, hey, it's not
safe.
Stay home.
But if everyone's staying home, there are people
who don't have paychecks coming in and companies
were going to likely fail.
So there was all kinds of measures, extraordinary
(15:58):
measures to try to help individuals to have
income and companies to be able to keep
afloat and maybe keep up with some payroll
and the like.
There were loans.
(16:19):
People had to pay back loans for employees.
There was all types of government intervention.
But the markets, the financial markets, were worried
about the revenue of corporations and how this
was going to play out.
Things dropped starkly in the face of, hey,
the world has stopped.
The world has stopped.
(16:39):
And will that mean profitability stops?
And therefore, is there going to be any
revenue?
Well, I think in times like those, it's
hard to keep your perspective on things.
The idea that Brian would talk about the
idea that earnings aren't a single year when
(17:01):
it comes to stock value.
It's not based on a single moment in
time.
It's based on projected over many years.
How does this play out?
But of course, you have the uncertainty of,
well, what's changing?
What does that mean?
How will it play out?
I think that's the key word there, Chris,
is uncertainty.
Corporations and markets adjust to things.
And maybe we're going to talk about this.
(17:22):
I'll just tease it now.
Go for it.
Let's do it.
It's kind of uncertain in the market right
now.
The uncertainty isn't a pandemic.
The uncertainty is economic and political.
And to it, specifically, tariffs.
The market isn't sure what's happening with tariffs.
And it makes the market unstable and uncertain.
(17:44):
And that usually means a downward trend, in
my opinion, when the market and corporations are
uncertain about how they're going to be able
to do business or what the rules of
doing business are.
Taxes, in this case, tariffs.
We tend to see a downward trend, especially
the market had been good and is good
(18:07):
now or was good.
So there's some analogy between then and now,
even though it's a different subject.
When we came out of 2019, we were
dealing with a great wind at our back,
a solid year in the markets.
And then suddenly you have this disruption.
(18:30):
I think what you have to take away
from that experience and perhaps the analogy in
the midst of what's going on now is
good investors are the ones that take advantage
of opportunity.
The impulse that people have oftentimes is to
(18:51):
say, I'm going to get more defensive as
a consequence of anxiety.
And the best investors say, what opportunities is
this creating for me to take advantage of
as a long-term investor?
And I think that's the mindset we need
to be interpreting as investors.
(19:12):
When things are feeling perhaps a bit excessive,
we get a little more defensive, which is
what our firm had done on the edges
in 2019.
So as it turned out, not anticipating the
pandemic, but just feeling like things were a
little bit overpriced, we were better positioned to
(19:35):
not feel it as fully as some people
might have.
Similarly, I think when we look at going
into this year, our team strategies for our
clientele, the discretionary strategies we manage for our
clientele, we've been recognizing that for those most
(19:55):
conservative investors, well, there's a little bit of
excess in the price of the market, the
multiples that people were paying for certain parts
of the market.
So there was an opportunity to be a
little bit more defensive, which we were.
That's been good in the sense of what's
going on around us.
(20:17):
And what we need to think about, whether
we're a moderate or aggressive investor or a
conservative or preservation-minded investor, is in the
midst of these changes, as markets become a
little bit more volatile, valuations readjust, does that
(20:38):
create opportunities?
And I think that's one thing I will
say to give Brian Regan some credit for
our team.
In the 2020 environment, he had great insights
in the way he was thinking about things,
which I was very appreciative at that time.
(20:59):
It kept us in perspective of opportunities that
were being created, whether it was in treasuries
or in municipals or even high yield exposure,
there was opportunity with less risk than maybe
stock-like returns, but maybe not stock-like
risk.
Similarly, when it came to our stock exposure,
(21:21):
there were certain sectors we wanted to reimagine
how we wanted to be positioned in, given
where there was greater disruption, there was greater
opportunity.
So these are things we need to kind
of take to heart in challenging times, when
the inclination, the temptation is to say, you
(21:45):
know, arms in the air, run for the
hills, you know, like we want to be
inclined to increase our cash, you know, hey,
let's do something.
You know, that notion, don't just sit there,
do something.
We want to take the option and say,
don't just do something, sit there.
(22:05):
We've already, with our client's strategies, had the
opportunity to be a little bit proactive on
some of these considerations.
And that doesn't mean there isn't disruption.
When markets move, everybody feels it.
If you have stock, you feel it.
But, you know, to what extent?
(22:26):
And does that create some room for opportunities
to be benefited for, as we look longer
term ahead?
I don't know, what's that?
This conversation reminds me of something that we
talk about from time to time.
It's probably 10 years old now, but the
Vanguard study, who did an assessment of the
(22:50):
value of working with a financial advisor who
has your best interest at heart, and, you
know, who's doing these things every day, is
aware of history, aware of patterns, aware of
the ups and downs, and, you know, is
going to be less impacted by some of
the emotional things that happen.
Because we know that a majority of investors,
(23:10):
this isn't just our opinion, this has been
studied, the majority investors, when the stock market's
roaring to record highs, say, get me some
of that.
I want in.
I want in.
And when the market is down with a
correction or even in a bear market, people
say, get me out of this.
I don't want to lose more money.
And what this Vanguard study showed is that
(23:34):
when you work with an advisor who has
the tolerance, who has the experience, who has
the wisdom that you've been describing, Chris, back
in 2020, or today, even,
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