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The last 12 pandemic months were chaos for millions of Americans. Here at Heron Wealth, we never took our eye off the ball, advising our clients through this tough time, but also making sure their financial lives for the next 10, 20 even 30 years remained on track.
Most of our clients are familiar with how we use our financial planning tools during client reviews. For those people who are less familiar, we decided to spend 15 minutes of Sunday night's webinar studying our demonstration family - the Millers.
We like to think that we make purely rational decisions in investing, or indeed in life in general. But in fact, we are as reactive as our ancient relatives. The instincts that allowed us to survive back then often lead us astray today. As investors, we’re hired to manage portfolios, but we probably spend just as much time managing emotions. In our Cognitive Biases series, we described these common emotional “shortcuts.” Understanding and controlling these biases helps us avoid costly errors in judgment.
To coin a phrase made famous by Britain's Queen Elizabeth II,
2020 has been our "annus horribilis."
David Edwards sat down with Buff Parham to answer questions from our clients:
Pandemic: how do you see the population getting vaccinated over time and how do you see the economy rebounding as a result?
None of us will forget 2020 anytime soon…truly a tumultuous year. In your opinion, what is the single most important takeaway we should contemplate going forward?
What do you see happening with inflation, economic growth, and bond yields next year?
And more! View our webinar replay now to learn what we at Heron Wealth thought of the year 2020 in review and what we expect for 20201.
We hosted a webinar Sunday night, November 15th, with the subject "Make America Normal Again."
In the Heron Wealth monthly webinar series, David Edwards discussed:
1. Ramifications of a Biden Presidency with a split Congress for policy, the economy and the stock market.
2. US stocks are near a record high, but the foundation of the stock market is weak. What can we expect over the next 6-12 months?
3. We are at a perilous time in American history. If half of Americans are at the throats of the other half of Americans, how can we concentrate on ending the pandemic, rebuilding the economy to create wealth, without which further gains in the stock market will stall. How did we get here? What can we do, as average Americans, to turn things around?
Here we are in one of the most challenging years that most Americans can remember.
Half the country is on fire - literally! The other half of the country is torn apart by police violence and protester violence.
We have a contested election coming up. The economy is reeling from recession. The unemployment situation has improved in recent months, but 20 million fewer Americans have jobs compared to 6 months ago.
What do wealth advisors and jet liner pilots have in common?
99.9% of the time, pilots fly their planes on auto-pilot, sitting in the cockpit and monitoring the instruments while the passengers watch videos or sleep. Every once in a while, a pilot has to make a difficult landing during a heavy thunderstorm. Visibility drops to zero, thunder and lightening crash, the plane rolls, yaws and drops 200' in a heartbeat. The last 20 minutes is highly unpleasant for the passengers, but the pilot and crew have the training, experience and technology to punch through the bad weather, get the plane safely to the ground, and send the passengers on their way home.
On Sunday July 12, 2020, 6PM EDT David Edwards hosted his monthly webinar addressing the current financial climate.
On Friday, the US Labor department released unemployment numbers that were "less bad" than had been expected. Confounding expectations of 20% unemployment or higher, US labor markets gained 2.5 million jobs, while the unemployment rate fell to 13.3% from 14.7%.
Before anyone takes a victory lap, remember that unemployment has not been as high as 13.3% since the 1930's. Gains of 2.5 million jobs modestly offset the 21.4 million jobs lost in March and April.
On Friday, as expected, the US jobs reports released horrific numbers.
20.5 million jobs lost in April on top of 701K jobs lost in March, versus 22.4 million gained since 2009
by comparison, 8.7 million jobs were lost over 18 months during the "Great Recession" of 2008-9
The previous record loss was 2 million, set in 1945 the month after the US demobilized from WW II
The unemployment rate jumped from the recent low of 3.5% in February, to 4.4% in March, to 14.7% in April
Previous post war record was 10.8% in 1984, 10.1% in 2009
"True" unemployment rate is actually closer to 20%
May unemployment could read as high as 25%
Each week, we ask ourselves, "When will things get better?" And each week we are disappointed.
In recent months, we've talked about how to make good financial decisions in times of uncertainty. In our upcoming webinar, we will update viewers on:
1. The current economic outlook
2. Recap the Trump economic record
3. Discuss what might happen on election night, November 3rd, but also in the days and weeks that follow.
Q&A to follow.