“[T]he only thing we have to fear is…fear itself.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt.
This quote is truer today than at any time I can recall in my career. The coronavirus itself will pale in comparison to the damage done by the fear of the coronavirus.
Will the coronavirus change the market’s overall momentum? Anything is possible, but it is not very likely. In our opinion, trying to guess the long-term impact of such global events is a fool’s errand. Prudent investors know what they own and why they own it.
Health scares, political scandals, natural disasters – you name it; when it is time for selling and nothing else is around, Wall Street will grab any excuse to generate some trades. That does not mean those trades are actually related to the value of a stock.
This is why so many in the administration have tried to assure us that all this tariff business is just negotiating. They believe in free trade; they just want it to be fairer, and they believe these tactics will help make that happen. I have doubts about this strategy, but I’m pulling for them to work because that would be a better world. I don’t understand people who route against their country.
The slowdown in the economy has been driven by business investment, or the lack thereof, and the slowdown in business investment has been driven by uncertainty in international trade. The stock market seems to understand that, even if many who pontificate about the market do not.
