Yesterday…all my troubles seemed so far away. Now it looks as though they’re here to stay.
“Yesterday,” Beatles (1965)
Well, here we are in yet another crazy, mixed-up world with a list of troubles seemingly without
end and seemingly here to stay. At home, we have a work force reluctant to go back to work,
persistently high inflation, an ultra-high federal debt load, and a governing class looking like
two armed camps. Overseas, we’re dealing with two large-scale wars, either one of which could
become a much larger conflict. What’s the investor supposed to do in the fall of 2023? Always a
good question, and we once again were reminded of another time and place and another set of
highly unpredictable outcomes.
September 2020. A good friend and client asked one of us about the upcoming presidential election,
specifically how that election might impact her portfolio and what, if anything, she and we
should do about it. The lengthy email response? Not much that clients and other friends of the
Firm haven’t heard before from us, but a few things you might find interesting. Naturally, we’ve
done some editing of the original email, and, in the immortal words of Jack Webb, “the names
have been changed to protect the innocent.” Anyway, here goes. The subject is the 2020 election,
but to make a few points, as you’ll see, we go back to 2016.
Anything to Do?”