On the blog this week, Jonathan shares some insight on how to survive and thrive with a sense of calm confidence.
Good afternoon. This is Jonathan Satovsky of Satovsky Asset Management. March 24th, 2020.
And today’s video blog update, we do talk about the state of affairs of what’s going on in the markets and the world.
And today was a day to take a breath.
Almost the first breath for most people in almost 30 days.
We’ve had 30 days where the fear index has been above 50 and 60 and 70 and 80 and 90 which is denoting a level of emergency and panic that normally lasts only a handful of days.
So 30 days of red alert levels is enough to test anyone’s internal systems.
Fortunately, we had a little respite and a little breather today with a 2,000 point rise in the Dow Jones Industrial Average as maximum pessimism is, has been teetering for people throwing in the towel over the past couple of weeks.
And that is a positive in the realm of a lot of other negative news that people have been confronted with the past 30 days.
So let’s talk about the issue at hand today.
We have a national crisis, a global crisis. 7 billion people on the planet are impacted by a corona virus that technically does not have a high mortality rate.
But certainly the spread and the impact can be debilitating to a lot of people and in an effort to reduce that spread and impact and the casualties which the facts say that the casualties percentage-wise are supposed to be very low.
The governments around the world have decided to create a global shutdown.
Basically, shutting down cities. Shutting down the global economy.
And in New York City, 98% small business owners are essentially shut down and what that means is that there’s a risk that trickles through the entire economy of people not going to work, not be able to pay their employees, layoffs spiking, rent rolls not being paid.
Real estate holders, values plummeting and bonds, real estate mortgage bonds, and commercial loans dropping precipitously.
So there is a dramatic impact to other unintended consequences of trying to fix one problem, creates a problem exponentially worse than the problem you’re trying to fix.
So now the debate is, well should we send people back to work. And risk that the impact of flattening the curve, overwhelms the health system.
So we have some complicated issues at hand no doubt at all.
And we’ve been trying to focus on what we can control and the idea of the day is to survive and thrive.
And survival at this moment for most people is having enough liquidity to breathe. Take a breath to be able to get through this period of time.
The cliche is, this too shall pass but it certainly will but it may be a rocky road for a lot of people in the months and year ahead.
And we need to be as kind and compassionate to ourselves and toward the people around us. To be able to get through this together with the people we love and support one another the best we can.
So with that, hopefully this week we’ll have some more room to breathe and calibrate some of this very difficult decisions for everybody and look forward to navigating the journey together.
