By Allen Giese, ChFC®, CLU®, ChSNC®
Dear Clients,
I’m writing this on behalf of everyone here at Northstar to keep you informed of our current situation and talk a little bit about how we view capital markets going forward.
These are uncertain times, and we want to begin by acknowledging how much your relationship means to us and our prayers for your continued health. At the core, our relationship with each of you is unique and crosses over from business to friendship. We value that deeply.
We’ve spoken recently to some of you, but time constraints have made it impossible to speak to all on a one-to-one basis over the past month. Hopefully, this letter will help remedy that.
Northstar Staff
We are taking this pandemic seriously and are practicing distancing and working from home, for the most part. Steve is the lone person at the office to make sure phone calls are answered, mail gets processed, and computers and servers stay running. Everybody is healthy, and we are doing everything we can to maintain our health! We’re working out the kinks to online meetings, voicemail forwarding, and paperwork processing. We adapt and it’s working well.
We’ve suspended all face-to-face live meetings and have been conducting nearly all client meetings online with video conferencing. Since we already had a significant amount of our clients out of the area, video conferencing is nothing new for us. We’re finding, for most clients, it’s easy and offers a wonderful alternative.
Markets
For those of you who have been clients for some time, especially through the 2000 tech bubble burst and the 2007-09 recession, you’ll find nothing new here. Nothing about this crisis has changed the way we view capital markets. If anything, it has only confirmed what we already know. We operate on three fundamental principles:
Faith
We know, right down to our core, that global capital markets will survive this. We have a certainty, guided by the historical record, that the entire global capital market system will not only recover but will move toward new highs, just as it has every one of the last 15 calamitous events since World War II. Because we don’t condone investing in individual securities, we eliminate much of the speculative business risk that might otherwise cause the misfortunes of any one or just a few companies to damage our portfolios. What we invest in is the concept of capital markets thriving over time, and that’s what we have faith in.
Patience
We understand that the market will operate on its own timetable. We can’t change that. All we can do is patiently wait for the turn we know is coming one day. That day could be today, tomorrow, or any day in the future. All we can control is how we are positioned when that point of turn happens.
Discipline
We realize that it requires significant discipline to keep a portfolio’s posture constant in a falling market. It often means buying equities when you are seeing the rest of the world exiting those markets. It means doing the opposite of what panicked investors are doing while ignoring (or at least remaining rational) about what is causing the panic.
We look forward to a world that returns to normal and visiting with you, helping you with your wealth management plan, and watching you achieve your most important goals.
I’d like to leave you with some words that were sent to me recently that inspired me and I hope you as well:
“And the people stayed home and read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being and were still.
And listened more deeply.
Some meditated, some prayed, some danced.
Some met their shadows.
And the people began to think differently.
And the people healed.
And in the absence of living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.
And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.”
—Kitty O'Meara, “And The People Stayed Home”
Looking forward to talking to you soon,
Allen Giese
President
Northstar Financial Planners