During dinner last night, my daughters mentioned that this year has been like the second Hunger Games book, Catching Fire. If you're not familiar with it, the game in the story is based on a clock. Every hour brings a new, fresh hell for the tributes. Sort of like 2020, isn't it?
There is a lot I don't know, although that's probably not what you want to hear from your financial advisor. I don't know what the market is going to do in the short run. Or how this pandemic will play out. And I really don't know how three men murdered Ahmaud Arbery while he was out for a jog; how a man in Minneapolis felt that a uniform gave him the right to murder George Floyd or how so many injustices continue to persist in America.
But I do know a few things, and what I know is what I am choosing to focus on:
- The vast majority of us want the same things: good schools, clean air and water, a level playing field for all people. How we get there is where we differ.
- In the long run, the markets work. Millions of people choosing to purchase - or not - goods and services drive business decisions and a profitable economy over time. The market has already started to recover from the initial shock of the pandemic, and it will continue to do so.
- We will find effective treatments and a vaccine for the virus. There are multiple promising clinical trials underway.
- There is good work being done by our friends and neighbors. People who are volunteering to help kids learn to read, or coach youth sports. Running food banks and help centers.
- America is far from perfect, but we continue to strive for the ideals set forward in the Declaration of Independence, chief among them that all men are created equal. At the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, George Washington sat in a chair with a sun carved into the back. Ben Franklin remarked "I have often looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting. But now I know that it is a rising sun."
I know that the sun is not setting for America. There are too many good people doing good things. As the shut down ends, and as we hopefully come together and move forward to a more just society, I know we can and will continue to do better. As individuals, as families, as a society, progress is being made.
We are here for you, your questions, your concerns. Stay safe and well.