What the Finance!

This week probably was confusing. We registered record highs in the stock market, saw a decrease in the bond market yields, and certain alternative funds made billions of dollars this week. The government passed a stimulus plan. The Federal Reserve bought more bonds, loosened regulations on banks’ ability to lend, and increased bond and equity purchases. This week did not seem as dire as the week before. Here is what we still know: 1)    The US Government is still not responding at the same rate the virus is spreading and is instead playing politics. There are conflicting messages with what is going on with the virus. Some governors have kept their states “open,” and some have issued orders for businesses to close and people to stay home. There is no clarity yet on how the stimulus will work, nor a rush to get the money out. 2)    There has been a rapid increase in the number of confirmed cases and deaths. It took 27 days to have the death toll rise to 1,000 i...

Please note: the following are my own beliefs and thoughts. They are not attributed to any employer, organization, or person. They are my own. The global economy is in limbo, and that trickles down to you and me. Experts are in agreement that we are still only at the beginning of an ugly downturn. Just over 30 days ago, we were at market highs with a tight labor market and just two weeks ago, record unemployment. As of this writing, we are 30% below market high, have 281,000 unemployment claims that were made in the last five days alone (a 33% increase from the prior week), and simply an unclear outlook. In my opinion, the turbulence of the stock, bond, and alternative markets can be attributed to three things: 1)    We are not prepared to face this pandemic. This is an apolitical reality. 2)    We do not understand enough about this virus. 3)    We are not sure what the long-term damage is to local, national, and global economies. Conn...