The Dividend Cafe - Dividend Cafe - David L. Bahnsen from NYC on 9/11 Anniversary

Episode Date: September 11, 2020

David reminisces about the 9/11 and the aftermath of the city and the people of New York City. Links mentioned in this episode: DividendCafe.com TheBahnsenGroup.com

Welcome to the Dividend Cafe, weekly market commentary focused on dividends in your portfolio and dividends in your understanding of economic life. Well, hello and welcome to this week's Dividend Cafe podcast. And hopefully some of you are watching on the video because I think it's going to be a lot more interesting this week for video people than podcasts. I'm not going to do our normal deal this week. And the reason why is that the whole entire dividend cafe this week is dedicated to a 17 page white paper I wrote on the election and all the political implications right now here in 2020 to the economy, to the investment landscape and specific portfolio

risks and opportunities. So on Monday, we're going to do a good hour long podcast video about that whole subject. And you can participate in it live on Zoom, or we will get the link out afterwards, the replay. But rather than go through all that content here on Friday and then be redundant with what we're doing Monday. And because today is September 11th and the 19th anniversary of this tragic event, as I was walking through the city here this morning, I stopped and decided to record here. And I just want to make a couple quick comments. Now, ironically, I'm sitting here right now on six Avenue or as no New Yorker calls it Avenue of the Americas and at the corner in between 54th and 55th street.

And right here in this courtyard, this is the Alliance Bernstein building and you can see the whole tall deal there. This whole beautiful patio courtyard area just kind of opened up after quarantine. But for a whole year, I was a tenant in this building here, our bonds and group offices were here until we took our new space earlier in the year. And of course, we have, we utilize Heinz Bernstein for a lot of our tax free And of course, we utilize Heinz Bernstein for a lot of our tax-free bond management.

So we know this building and this area very well. This courtyard is quite beautiful, but it wasn't the entire time I was in the building. It was under construction. And so I moved out and then finally they opened it all up. But anyways, this area, this particular intersection I'm sitting is one I know very well here in New York from being here at the office. But then where I'm going with this with 9-11 is right there across the street is the Warwick Hotel. And directly what you're looking at in the downstairs, that little lobby called Randolph's is a lounge. And right after 9-11, my wife and I were married on September 8th, 2001. um my my wife and i were married on september 8th 2001 and we um were flying to tahiti for our honeymoon on a red eye from lax and we landed at 9 11 on 9 11 um and it's obviously a

whole event i think i've shared the story with some of you before that we'll never forget. And I was at Payne Weber at the time, which had gotten bought by UBS. And I spent the whole month of January in 2002, just a couple months after 9-11, in a little city here on the other side of the Hudson River, just not too far from where I'm sitting, called Wealka, New Jersey, where Payne Weber's headquarters were. And my wife came out to visit me over Martin Luther King weekend in January of 2002. And we were obviously we'd only been married about three months. And I had to be away for this whole month. And, and it was one of those moments where, you know, we had a very different budget back then than we do now, suffice it to say. different budget back then than we do now suffice it to say and the water pastoria had rooms for 160 a night normally were closer to a thousand a night uh because it was in the aftermath of 9-11

and so on that martin luther king weekend jolene and i got to get away uh from from weok in new jersey and and and all the stuff the the programs and everything I was doing out there with Payne Webber. And we came here into the city and were able to stay in places that normally would have been outside of our budget at the time. And that Randolph's across the street here, this Warwick Hotel, on the Saturday night that she was here, we were out, we had dinner somewhere, and we ended up going into that lounge and just sitting there and talking with people for several hours. And for those of you who are football fans, by the way, if you happen to remember, particularly if you're Raider fans,

you're really not going to like this. The famous tough rule, the night that Tom Brady fumbled and they gave the Patriots the ball back, and it would have won the game for the Raiders. It ended up winning the game for the Patriots, and they went the Patriots the ball back and it would have won the game for the Raiders ended up winning the game for the Patriots and they went on and won the Super Bowl and it was this stormy icy mess well I watched that game live that night from that lounge right across the street here uh anyways um I guess the football season starting up last night and this weekend. It made sense to add that anecdotal story. But I just sat there for several hours that initial weekend and what would become the

beginning of a 20-year relationship with New York City. And I have now been back to that lounge more times than you would even believe. I wrote chapters and chapters of my book, Crisis of Responsibility, there. I've brought my kids in there. It's just this little centrally located place. I can go have a cappuccino, a coffee. I've met money managers in there. And I've never once gone in there. I've gone in there with Daya and Brian from my team on our annual New York trip many times. I've never gone in there without thinking about that night I'd been there with Jolene. And we were there because we were here in the city

because New York's economy was so bad that I can stay at the Waldorf for $160 a night. And now here we are 19 years later in a very different world, but a similar situation in this sense. On the anniversary of 9-11, people are talking about coming back from this COVID affair, coming back from this distress, the economy is so beat up. Well, I never thought that 19 years after staying at the Waldorf because I could get a special deal that I would end up staying at the Waldorf 250 times before I ended

up getting an apartment here in the city, that I'd opened an office here in New York, that we'd have multiple employees and advisors, that it would become a second home for me, that the stock market back then would quadruple from where it was after 9-11, when it felt like the world was ending. We had both Warren Buffett and even then-Vice President Dick Cheney in the week after 9-11 predicting that it was only a matter of time until we had a nuclear attack on American soil, not just terrorist barbarians with box cutters. And God only knows what the future will hold. A crucial factor will be our continued resolve against those who would do us harm. But the

reality is that through 9-11, not only did all of these things happen in my adult life that I never could have anticipated, but so many things happened in capital markets and in the life of investors that nobody could have happened. And there is a sort of deja vu being here in the COVID moment in New York on the anniversary of 9-11 where all these things just sort of run together. Oh, I said there was another spot too. So I'll show that real quick as well here. This is the Hilton Hotel where President Trump, it's still closed, by the way. They're doing construction and things just because of the COVID moment.

But that's where President Trump gave his acceptance speech the night of the actual election. I believe it has the most rooms of any hotel in New York. And so, you know, right, this is kind of a big area just down the street a little bit is Fox News, where obviously I've filmed a lot over the years at Radio City Music Hall three blocks down. And I'll be walking just down to Madison Avenue for a lunch appointment here when I get finished recording. So you're kind of in the midst, the hub of this, what I consider the greatest city in the world.

It's going through a very difficult time from COVID. Things are starting to pick up out here. You can feel more and more people coming back to work and a bit more of the energy, but it's got a long ways to go. But it was a scarred and bruised city after 9-11 as well. The economy was bruised and scarred, the stock market was. And so whether at that point in my life when I was a young adult or this point in my life where I'm a, let's just say, older adult, I want the message of today's podcast to be one of resilience.

Resilience through the atrocity of 9-11, resilience through the awfulity of 9-11 resilience through the awful pandemic of coronavirus and an understanding that there are not situations that the human spirit will not be able to overcome in your life as an investor there will be volatility. There will be difficulty. But I'm telling you that from the bottom of my heart, the two experiences I'm describing here in this 20-year period that bookend it are the greatest proof I can offer you that there is a tremendous reward to those who are able to persevere through these difficult times. So I hope whether you're listening or watching, this has been a useful message. And I really look forward to come back to you on Monday

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