The Dividend Cafe - Special Edition Dividend Cafe - Part 1 - Year Behind 2020/Year Ahead 2021
Episode Date: January 5, 2021Our very special annual white paper is here, wherein we exhaustively recap 2020 and the year that just was (yes, even beyond the obvious stuff), and provide our key themes and perspectives for the yea...r ahead. Reach out with any questions, and feel free to share/forward as you wish! Contact us at www.thebahnsengroup.com for your copy. Links mentioned in this episode: DividendCafe.com TheBahnsenGroup.com
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Welcome to the Dividend Cafe, weekly market commentary focused on dividends in your portfolio and dividends in your understanding of economic life.
Well, hello. Welcome to this special edition podcast video providing you a little 2020 review and recap. And based on the way most people in our society have talked about 2020 for some time now,
I'm sure that's the last thing a lot of people want to do is review and recap what 2020 represented.
But we're doing this special midweek podcast on reviewing 2020 because we wanted to separate it from the 2021 forecast and themes and look ahead
that we're going to be doing on Wednesday of this week. So you should be getting into your feed,
again, depending on how you go about listening to this and receiving it. But our goal here is that
this Tuesday podcast represents the 2020 review and then tomorrow, Wednesday, we're providing that 2021 themes.
We thought it was biting off more than we wanted to chew to do both together.
The year 2020 was obviously a very difficult year in a whole lot of ways. I think socially and culturally and politically, there
were all sorts of things that I would rather forget about and a lot of things that will
represent a really troubled time in our country and in our society. But of course, I'm here
specifically to talk about it economically, talk about it from the vantage point of markets
and investors. And you would look at the main event of 2020 and hopefully your primary comment
would not be on how COVID impacted the political scene, how it impacted perhaps the social or
cultural dynamic. And even hopefully it would not be, as your first thought,
how it impacted the market and capital investment from the vantage point of investors.
At its core, coronavirus was and is a medical issue.
And yet it became a medical issue that obviously had far-reaching impact
into the economy and into all these other different categories as well.
But it did something else this year, which I think is very helpful for investors,
is it gave a reminder, it gave a lesson, it gave a reaffirmation that sometimes investing on
the day-by-day headlines and what you're feeling and what the sentiment may seem to be at a
given moment in time can be utterly disastrous.
That is not the exception.
It is more or less the rule.
And when there are exceptions to the rule, they tend to go the other way. It's
very rare in my experience that investor experience ends up playing out along the lines of what it
feels like it's going to. It generally produces surprises and contrarian realities from what the expectations may be. And that is one of the reasons that we
force investor behavior to be at the core of how we think about all decisions investors make,
all reactions we have, the guidance we give to clients at its center must be rooted in discipline and investor behavior that does not allow them, investors, clients to be swayed, pulled, pushed, prodded from a well-thought and well-constructed, balanced plan that is suitable to the goals and needs
of that investor without really tremendous provocation.
And what I think the COVID moment did, above all else and all the things I'm about to talk
about, was give people an incredible excuse to vary from their plans and have provided an incredible lesson
in terms of what pain doing so can create and the wisdom and the rewards that lie
in place for investors that stick to their not only plan, but the principles, the time-tested principles by
which a proper portfolio is supposed to be constructed. So let me kind of rewind a little
bit. You go back to the beginning of 2020 as the year was starting off. It's important to remember
the context going into the year, and that is that 2019 was smoking hot. If memory serves, the only months in 2019 that were down all year were the months of
May and the months of August.
But in the context of such a high double-digit return in risk assets, equity markets up between
20% and 30%, and all real categories of risk assets performing positively in 2019, unlike 2018
where they had all performed negatively.
Really, the distinctions amongst different risk assets were somewhat immaterial.
People did quite well being invested, and particularly in the fourth quarter of 2019,
when what had been a big stumbling block to markets, the uncertainty surrounding
China, U.S.-China trade negotiations was mostly resolved. And so you exited 2019 with a Fed having
cut rates, having chickened out on their 2018 commitments to tightening monetary policy,
chickened out on their 2018 commitments to tightening monetary policy.
And with the overhang of the U.S.-China trade war
not fully resolved, but at least moving in that right direction
and a phase one trade deal having been agreed due in December
and then executed upon in January of 2020.
So when I say that the first six weeks of 2020 added another thousand points to the Dow, you have to understand that's on top of what had been several thousand points from 2019
already. And ironically, what was probably the big catalyst to additional return in early 2020 was actually China.
But instead of it being that other headline of this really kind of creepy and mysterious virus that was starting to spread around parts of the Wuhan region in China,
virus that was starting to spread around parts of the Wuhan region in China, it was really more a positive vibration around the trade deal and the execution of the phase one deal that Trump
administration had been working on. So, of course, by late January, the reports of what was happening
in the Wuhan region were taking off a bit. And we even had a President's Day weekend
early February where markets kind of checked back after the holiday, hearing that some really,
really large, including the largest company in the world in America, that they were kind of having
to slow down or shut down some of their factory activity and so forth in the region because of what was going on. But to give you an idea
of how totally unrealistic it was to markets and to most thought leaders at the time,
as far as the gravity and seriousness that would, of course, end up coming out of COVID-19. It was February 25th, I mean, almost to the very end of the month,
that the Democrats had their last competitive debate. It was their last multi-multi-candidate
debate, because after the South Carolina primary, a few days later, all the other candidates besides
Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden backed out of the race or going into Super Tuesday a couple of days later. But you had all of those, you know, candidates up on stage on February 25th.
And I had spoken at a conference earlier that day and was in my hotel room after the conference
up in West L.A. and had a client meeting and got back in time to watch the debate.
And the entire debate went by without a single mention of COVID. And that isn't because they
all knew what was going on and were choosing not to talk about it. It was because even at that
late point, it simply wasn't the issue that it was about to become just really a couple weeks later that obviously would dominate most of the news of 2020.
So markets did in the last week of February start to check back in the first kind of leg down from those new highs that had been created.
I believe it was Friday, February 13th, if I remember correctly.
I remember it was going into Valentine's Day weekend. I was in New York at the time and
markets had hit new highs. And by the end of February, markets had started to reverse,
but not violently, but just more around the uncertainty of what was going on around China,
what was going to happen with global trade.
And also, it at that point had not really come to America much that we knew of yet.
I actually think it was very heavily in America at that point, but not that we knew of or were talking about.
But it was rather well spread into certain parts of northern Italy and even parts of South Korea.
And so at that point, this was no longer just a Wuhan region story in China, but was becoming
more of a global pandemic.
The first week of March, you then saw Joe Biden pummel Bernie Sanders on Super Tuesday
and every other candidate who got out of the race
endorsing joe biden and you went from the markets i think in late february maybe not pricing in the
idea of a bernie sanders nomination but pricing in the heavy possibility betting odds for at least
a couple weeks you have to remember as we get ready to inaugurate joe biden president
as we get ready to inaugurate Joe Biden president, that as late as, let's see, Nevada,
South Carolina, Iowa, New Hampshire, at least four states in, you were looking at Joe Biden in last place or second to last place. It was, it was, the betting odds had Bernie Sanders well above 80%
to be the eventual and ultimate Democrat nominee. But then Biden's come from behind win in
South Carolina and a very quick coalescing around him from the other candidates caused the Democratic
primary to change suddenly and significantly. So with that new candidate, more or less the presumed nominee, now going into March.
Markets settled a bit around that front.
And in fact, the first week of March, going into the Friday close, it was Friday, March 6th,
and the Bonson Group was a sponsor at a charity golf tournament.
It's an annual tradition here in Newport Beach, a pro golf tournament.
And as late as that Friday, March the 6th, let's see, 7th, 8th, 9th was the weekend, I believe.
Yeah. Let's see. 6th, 7th, 8th. Yeah. It was the Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
I have a very weird memory, by the way, and can remember dates pretty much off the top of my head as long as I can associate it with something else. And these are particularly in the few weeks we're about to go through, dates that I'll never forget.
Well, that golf tournament, we had dozens of clients coming in our hospitality tent, visiting, watching golf.
I don't think there was even such thing as people wearing masks at the
time. Now, at that point, events were starting to get canceled. There were certain hotel conferences
getting canceled or delayed or suspended. South by Southwest, a big music event in Austin, Texas,
they went ahead and canceled that. So stuff was really starting.
Okay. But again, the golf tournament happened. Markets that week had settled. And then that's
the end of that. That's the end of me saying the word settled here as we then went through
what really was the most violent couple of weeks in the market since the great financial crisis and those fateful events of September in 2008.
Well, that Sunday night, I was leaving the golf tournament and actually had a red-eye flight out of LAX to go back out to New York.
LAX to go back out to New York. And our phones and devices and, you know, I get news from so many different places and in so many different formats, it becomes kind of obnoxious when you
have a sort of major event releasing between the tweets and texts and pop-ups and alerts
on multiple devices. But I was blowing up, as they say, right, around Saudi and Russia announcing
that they could not come to a deal to curb supply and that they were, in fact, were going to
increase production, just flood the world with oil, essentially announcing a commodity war
on that Sunday. For us in California, it was Sunday early evening, but it was really the next day for the eastern part of the globe.
And I did my flight to New York. I got in.
And then that Monday, which was March the 9th, the market was down 2,000 points.
points. And so then the very next day, I took a train into Washington, D.C., where I had meetings with the National Economic Council in the White House. And we were talking about plans to get a
really, at the time, it seemed like a big deal. But now, in hindsight, it's laughable, just a
small kind of stimulus thing to get done. And when I say small, I mean, you know, just $75 billion,
thing to get done. And when I say small, I mean, you know, just $75 billion, right? But based on what, as you know, is about to happen, that really actually was very small. But they were debating
what the kind of, you know, ingredients of some sort of package need to look like. And I got to
sit in on some really interesting meetings. And even at the time, the belief very sincerely
was that these things were going to pass, that there was
a lot of damage being done, but they needed to figure out how to kind of plug the hole, get on
the other side of it. Well, I think that that Wednesday, March 11th, will kind of always be
remembered as the day where all of a sudden coronavirus came to America. It is just one person who, from what I understand, was better in three days.
But even the symbolic significance of one of America's most famous actors, Tom Hanks,
announcing that he and his wife at a movie set somewhere out of the country had come down positive with the virus.
The NCAA canceling their March Madness college basketball
tournament. The NBA suspending their season, having an outbreak with a number of positive tests
with a couple of their teams. And then President Trump doing a kind of emergency
announcement from the White House announcing he was suspending all air traffic in and out of Europe.
And so then it was like, OK, all hell's breaking loose here. And so that next Thursday, the 12th,
the markets were down another 2,300 points. Now, they had rebounded in between a little bit,
but it was just, you know,
utter debacle in the markets.
And all that was governing things was uncertainty
and really a total unawareness
as to where this thing was going.
Surprisingly, that Friday, March the 13th,
the markets rebounded 2,000 points that day,
a lot of it being in the end of the day.
The White House announced a coronavirus task force.
That's sort of the beginning part of where America got introduced to actually longtime government medical bureaucrats,
but nevertheless becoming household names began right around that time with Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr.
Deborah Birx, Vice President Pence spearheading this task force that was announced. And there was,
I think, some market optimism around the idea that they were going to be able to start increasing
testing. People forget that we had virtually no testing going on at the time. And understandably, that was a big point of concern. So I walked back, by the way, that
morning, I appeared on Wall Street Week with Maria Bartiromo. I've been a guest on that show
quite a few times over the years. I've actually done it at least once, if not twice since then,
then remotely. But that Friday morning I taped on set on Fox. And then, let's see, later in the day,
I was walking back to my apartment to meet my family. And the city was really empty and not as empty as it was about to become, but empty in a way I'd never seen it.
I've been traveling to New York for 20 years on business and I've held an office, an apartment
in New York for four years. I'd never seen anything like it. And my kids were going to
have a break from school coming up anyways. They actually had a two week planned spring break
anyways. And I just called my wife and said, look, I'll be home soon, but let's get out of here tonight.
Let's go ahead and just fly back to California, let things settle here, and we'll come back in a couple weeks and so forth.
Well, that was Friday, March 13th, and I didn't end up being back in New York until the very end of June for all the reasons I'm sure you know about that
we'll go through here in a moment. But as dramatic as that week was of March 9th, from the Saudi
Russia oil tanking to the market having two different days that it was down over 2,000 points
in a day, both of which are in the record books for, you know, amongst some of the worst days in
market history.
And me going to the White House and all these things that were happening, even that week was actually the second most dramatic week of 2020 based on what was about to happen
as we went into the very next week.
And so over the course of that weekend, there was an explosion of announcements of more
and more virus infections. And the policy response, the Fed basically was just shooting
bazookas, announcing, you know, 0% interest rates and unlimited quantitative easing. And they were still
trying to find their footing. They did not have all the meat on the bone yet, as we're about to
get to regarding what some of the policy prescriptions would be. But they were basically
doing their best to say, hey, we're going to do anything we can. But then that Monday, March 16th,
March 16th, markets did have what was their worst day since Black Monday.
So if you look into the modern era of stock market investing, it was the second worst day in market history.
If you go back to the Great Depression, it was the third worst day in market history,
12.9% to the downside.
Third worst day in market history, 12.9% to the downside.
And that, again, has to be understood in the context of after the first leg down we'd had in late February and then the substantial second leg down we'd had the week before.
And then that week of March 16th, starting off with this huge, huge down day.
It would have been Wednesday the 18th that California announced their lockdown,
actually beating New York in their announcement. A little irony there, California technically announced a lockdown before New York, and New York functionally had a lockdown well before
California. And so anyways, by the end of that week, then the president announced a national
shelter-in-place order, and we entered that next weekend, again, with the end of that week, then the president announced a national shelter in place order.
And we entered that next weekend again with the Fed announcing they were going to do this, do that.
But really markets deeply unsettled. And then on Monday, March the 23rd, the Monday prior had been down 3000 points.
Two Mondays prior had been down 2000 points.
been down 3,000 points. Two Mondays prior, been down 2,000 points. On that Monday, March 23rd, dropping significantly again, 1,500 points or so, but hitting an 18,213 bottom intraday, closing
closer to 18,500 or 18,600, and then reversing on Tuesday, March 24th, and never looking back.
and then reversing on Tuesday, March 24th, and never looking back.
And so I spent a lot of time for those two weeks.
Thank God I'm going to start to speed things up month by month throughout 2020.
But those two weeks were the most significant parts of 2020.
The temptation to sell out in that time, markets did not reverse because all of a sudden we said,
okay, here we have this really substantial plan. As a matter of fact, at that point, the plan was
universally locked down for two weeks and we're going to bend the curve. And if the markets had
known then what we were all about to find out, which was the locking down wasn't going to do
anything. And in fact, the COVID cases would continue spreading and so forth.
The improved environment around COVID would not come for over a month and it would not come because
cases slowed down. It would only come by summertime when they realized that less and less and less and
less people were dying and hospitals were becoming less and less and less affected by it. But ultimately, at that point in late March,
when markets reversed,
the one singular thing
that enabled markets to stop going down
was that the selling pressure,
forced selling pressure,
what I deemed at the time,
the national margin call, ended.
That we had half a trillion dollars, effectively,
of equities that were forced out of hands of leveraged owners. Risk parity, hedge funds,
market neutral funds that were in levered positions and that were for sellers.
that were in levered positions and that were for sellers.
This was causing tremendous disruptions in the corporate credit markets, bond spreads, municipal bonds were getting whacked,
very high-grade corporate bonds were getting whacked,
and there was almost no discrimination with inequities
as to what was going down or what wasn't going down.
Everything was getting hammered.
Well, the forced selling
came to an end. And then the other piece to it was the Fed's announcement that they were going
to begin buying corporate bonds. Now, I forgive you if your thought is, what in the world would
the Fed buying corporate bonds have to do with stocks?
What would make stocks stop going down?
What would make anyone feel better about equities knowing that the disease was still really out of control?
There was no real understanding as to what was going on or when it was going to end or what the impact was going to be to the economy.
going to be to the economy. And in fact, those things all worsened later and the Q2 annualized GDP contraction would be over 30% on an annualized basis. So you just had a complete and total
cessation of economic activity in the United States. And yet equities found a bottom and in
fact began rebounding 1, thousand points by the end of March
another couple thousand in April another thousand or so in May and we got back to the early part of
June at 27,000 Dow and we had started off early part of March at 27,000 Dow. And yet, actually, in between, went down all the way to 18,000 plus change.
Simply surreal.
Well, the reason that the Fed's interjection into corporate bonds affected stocks so much
was because the Fed was announcing they were going to provide whatever liquidity,
they were going to prime whatever use of credit was needed to maintain market functioning.
So it enabled a completely different posture, not just to stocks, but to risk assets that
some leverage could come back in the system, some carry trade could come back
in the system. Swap lines with foreign banks were reopened. The ability to lower one's cost of
capital has an instant increase on one's earnings. And hedge funds and sophisticated investors immediately saw that the reality was that not
only was the E of a P to E ratio, the price and earnings, that the E was going to come out better
off once we got on the other side of the economic pain because companies would have a lower cost of
debt, so higher earnings, but that also the.E. ratio itself, the multiple, the valuation
that we put on equities was going to come out much stronger.
And the reason being because the Fed was pushing down the risk free rate, what we call the
discount rate by how we measure and value the cash flows of risk assets.
So by going to a 0% rate environment and assuring there would be ample amount of liquidity and credit sloshing around and then pushing up earnings by pushing down cost
to capital, it became a perfect storm for risk appetite to come back into all risk assets and
it came back into equities. It was not fundamentals. It was not the fact that everyone was able to immediately see
that there would be a vaccine, you know, just seven or eight months later and all those kind
of things. It was literally a byproduct of how financial markets work. And so then we did go
into April and I mentioned getting more meat on the bone about what the Fed was going to do.
Not only did the Fed end up announcing this primary corporate credit facility and a secondary
corporate credit facility, but they announced that they were going to include in that buying
junk bonds, high yield bonds. They were actually buying ETFs to some of these bonds to support
that low cost of capital and support a proper amount of credit getting into companies who
needed access to credit.
Companies that were talking to the government about some sort of federal bailout,
all of a sudden were able to go to the bond market and just refinance debt and generate tons of liquidity.
It was a backdoor way of supporting capital markets.
There were some good things that they did there.
I think there were some really dangerous moral hazard things done.
But I'm only describing to you what took place so you understand why markets have covered the way they did.
Well, as we move things along throughout April and May, the lockdowns just continued.
And there was this sort of continued kind of punting a little bit, moving the goalpost.
And more and more people were just sort of content
that they were kind of stuck in their home.
And that's where this work from home stuff came about.
Kids were doing distance learning for school,
or at least 60 to 70% were.
A significant amount weren't really doing school,
which was just an utter tragedy.
But then the cases really started dropping.
The positive ratios started dropping.
Testing started increasing.
It took quite a while.
But I think going into summer, there was a bit of optimism.
Well, of course, the problem was that COVID couldn't be contained from the mere lockdown
and then reopening because it was a virus.
It had already broken out into the community.
It was going to spread.
And so I spent an incredible amount of time from May all the way through the summer
into the fall with my daily COVID and markets missives
talking about what was happening as what the press liked to call a second wave.
I am adamant that it was a first wave
in those states, but we had a real significant increase of exposure to COVID in Florida,
Arizona, and Texas, and basically spent the summer trying to figure out where the virus was headed
and what the good news, bad news was about this really quite heavy growth in cases. But through the entire time, the markets didn't blink.
And in fact, markets, which ended the month of June in the 25,000 to 26,000 range,
actually went up another 1,000 or 2,000 points throughout the summer. And the hospitalizations stayed contained.
It got a little hairy in certain pockets there,
but never ran into the overload that many had feared.
And in fact, the fatality rate continued to decline.
And so then we got through the end of summer,
markets in a good position,
and feeling that, okay, we don't have a vaccine yet.
We don't have COVID licked, but the society is doing a better job of learning to live with it.
And we knew who our more vulnerable people were we needed to protect.
And that was sort of what the thought would be around where to focus public policy.
public policy. So we go into the fall, but then you did have a little problem, and that was that technology stocks had rallied unbelievably throughout the summer, just like you can't
even imagine. And so tech had to have a little repricing and a little kind of check back in
September, for which it was very much due. And then you get into the month of October.
The COVID numbers are still reasonably settled
from that scare of the summer
and obviously the horrific scare from the spring.
But there was an awful lot of uncertainty
around the election.
At some point, the betting odds and the polls
that earlier in the year
had pretty consistently assumed that President Trump
on the backs of a really strong economy
was going to be reelected. Now the economy was weak had pretty consistently assumed that President Trump, on the backs of a really strong economy,
was going to be reelected.
Now the economy was weak, and from debate factors to polling to social media and a lot of other things, President Trump was now campaigning as an incumbent underdog.
And there was concerns that the Democrats may take the Senate and raise taxes
and increase regulation and do different things that might affect markets.
Regardless of what one's political aspirations for these different things would have been, markets had an understandable degree of uncertainty embedded in them.
So then we checked back quite a bit the first, excuse me, the last week of October.
And we go into election weekend with markets at the lowest point they'd
been in a couple months, low 26,000s in the Dow, and then we had the election.
It was closer than expected, certainly within certain states, both some states that President Trump won, like Florida and Ohio and Texas and Iowa
and North Carolina.
There were polls that did not think any of those things were going to happen.
And then the margin of defeat in Georgia, even Michigan and Wisconsin, it was not a great night for the pollsters.
But the outcome was still the same, that President Trump had been defeated in Electoral College by
President Biden. And yet the closeness of all of it and the polling errors where they manifested themselves in a way that
markets responded to was that in fact the senate seats that were largely assumed a republican was
going to lose in maine north carolina montana and um what's the the last one i'm forgetting here
um forgive me uh north carolina iowa maine and mont Montana and then you could argue there were people
who thought that there may even be vulnerability in South Carolina and Texas I don't think that was
super thoughtful but either way uh the Republicans kept all those seats so the markets just rallied
huge and the idea of more divided government, that there was not going to be
the pain and anguish that we had post Bush v. Gore. I understand there's a lot of controversy
for some around the way things have played out, but the markets certainly understood that there was
a resolution and clarity about how the election had ended, even if it ended differently than some had expected. So month of November, markets rallied quite substantially.
We started to see some of the picks of Team Biden, some of his transition team, his cabinet.
It's filled with some individuals that are controversial in some cases,
others that were really widely respected.
From my vantage point, I would say that the
selection of Janet Yellen at Treasury Secretary was surprising, but I think a good pick for him.
And so the way I worded it at the time was it's not the pick I would have made,
but it's as good of a pick as I would have expected him to make. And so all those things
kind of lined up. You went into December, kind of paused a little bit.
Certainly now with winter flu season, there was another resurgence of COVID.
Europe had more restrictions.
But this time, restrictions did not mean people couldn't go to work, couldn't go to school.
It was a much more qualified restriction.
Things like certain big cities trying to limit indoor dining and things like that, but not the holistic suffocation of economic activity that we had experienced in the spring.
largely in anticipation of the facts on the ground,
which are that bonds don't look attractive and a lot of international markets don't look attractive.
But from the vantage point of U.S. equity with a lot of money floating around,
it becomes a space that people feel better about relative to other alternatives.
And so here we are entering 2021
with a year behind us that will be in the history books, no doubt. We do enter 2021
with an expensive market as far as index investors are concerned. But a lot of our forecast,
our thoughts, our themes, our perspectives for the year ahead.
I'm going to make you wait till tomorrow where I'm going to do kind of the second parter of this conversation.
Talk about 2021.
in March has a rapidity to it, a violence to it, frankly, a misery to it. That is unfortunately part of being an equity investor. Thank God it doesn't happen all the time. But when you look at
the COVID moment, the financial crisis, 9-11, those of you who were investing during the crash in 1987, you're not talking about, you know, hundreds of years in history here.
year period of time, there's been four cases where markets just lost their bottom and fell.
And in all four cases, rebounded not only substantially, making really, really incredible new highs, but in some cases doing it very, very quickly. And in all cases, doing it much quicker
than anyone could have expected during the time we were going through the moment. So those concluding thoughts on 2020 involve understanding the mechanics as to why markets
collapse with the rapidity they do, that it is not this time is different moment.
It is the logistical reality of forced selling.
reality of forced selling. And I plead with all investors listening to never be one selling when you're not a forced seller. If anything, be a buyer from forced sellers. And if you don't have
the stomach for that, which most would not, then ride it out. I did not know in March that the COVID forced selling was going to last just a few days
and that the market's reasonable optimism about what things would look like on the other side of
COVID was going to last such a short period of time. And no one else understood or knew that
either. But we have significant lessons from significant world
events like the global pandemic, like the great financial crisis, like 9-11. We have significant
precedent for a very, very quick rebound for investors that are able to stay in their shoes
through these periods. Markets are discounting mechanisms.
They're pricing in today what they believe about tomorrow.
And 2020 was a great example of that.
The Federal Reserve was an animal in 2020.
There will be significant prices to be paid for their aggressive posture.
And yet, nevertheless, when I am just describing to you descriptively
what has taken place, it is impossible to measure the assist they've given to risk assets for those
engaged in capital markets. I'm going to leave things there because I want to give you plenty
to chew on. Ask any questions you have. Email us at questions at thebonsongroup.com. Anything you
like me to follow through on from this, because now at this point, I'm quite anxious and ready
and excited to leave 2020 in the dustbin and move forward into 2021. With that said, the annual
white paper that provides a lot of commentary and a lot of elaboration of what I
just got done going through with you. Talks about some particular themes in municipal bonds last
year, in emerging markets, the IPO craze resurgence coming back. There's some really, really fascinating
charts. I absolutely encourage you to read that white paper, reach out to us.
It should be going out to you on Wednesday. So with that said, thank you as always for listening
to the Special Dividend Cafe podcast. Reviewing 2020, we look forward to part two of our little
series here tomorrow. Thanks for listening. The Bonson Group is a group of investment professionals registered with Hightower Securities LLC, member FINRA and SIPC,
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