This Too Shall Pass
By: Brian A. Magnan CFP®, AIF®
Director – Magnan Family Wealth Management
(The following is timeless advice. As long as you are clients of ours, this should be printed and/or saved in a safe place to be read after all 20% declines in the S&P 500)
The (apocalypse du jour) situation continues to play itself out, as have all the numberless “crises” that have gone before it. It remains impossible to predict when and how this problem will be resolved. Likewise, it is impossible to know when and how the markets will anticipate (or react to) such a resolution, and that’s a completely different issue.
Financial media persist in reporting this as an unprecedented crisis in the economic and financial life of the world and suggesting that it is effectively insoluble. Neither contention is accurate, in my judgement, but that isn’t why I am writing to you today.
My purpose is simply to suggest that – difficult as it may be – we take our focus off the onslaught of catastrophist headlines and put it where it belongs: (a) your goals (b) our long-term plan for the achievement of your goals, and (c) on your portfolio as the long-term funding medium for that plan.
We didn’t and don’t invest as a speculation on the outcome of current events. We invest pursuant to principles that have always prevailed in the past. Chief among these, as President Kennedy observed, is that “no problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.”
We’ve elected to be guided by history as opposed to headlines. Invited by the media to subscribe to the bizarre thesis “This time it’s different,” we respond with “This too shall pass.”
You would not be human, I don’t think, if you didn’t experience some degree of fear at the direction of current events from time to time. The great achievement, at times like this, is simply not to give in to the fear. In a very real sense, my whole job is helping you toward that achievement.
Thank you for being our clients. I’m always here if you need me.
Director – Magnan Family Wealth Management
(The following is timeless advice. As long as you are clients of ours, this should be printed and/or saved in a safe place to be read after all 20% declines in the S&P 500)
The (apocalypse du jour) situation continues to play itself out, as have all the numberless “crises” that have gone before it. It remains impossible to predict when and how this problem will be resolved. Likewise, it is impossible to know when and how the markets will anticipate (or react to) such a resolution, and that’s a completely different issue.
Financial media persist in reporting this as an unprecedented crisis in the economic and financial life of the world and suggesting that it is effectively insoluble. Neither contention is accurate, in my judgement, but that isn’t why I am writing to you today.
My purpose is simply to suggest that – difficult as it may be – we take our focus off the onslaught of catastrophist headlines and put it where it belongs: (a) your goals (b) our long-term plan for the achievement of your goals, and (c) on your portfolio as the long-term funding medium for that plan.
We didn’t and don’t invest as a speculation on the outcome of current events. We invest pursuant to principles that have always prevailed in the past. Chief among these, as President Kennedy observed, is that “no problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.”
We’ve elected to be guided by history as opposed to headlines. Invited by the media to subscribe to the bizarre thesis “This time it’s different,” we respond with “This too shall pass.”
You would not be human, I don’t think, if you didn’t experience some degree of fear at the direction of current events from time to time. The great achievement, at times like this, is simply not to give in to the fear. In a very real sense, my whole job is helping you toward that achievement.
Thank you for being our clients. I’m always here if you need me.