Wednesday was a gut punch of a day across the financial markets, and I’m sure like me you’re all tired of the negative financial news. I can’t promise everything will be positive anytime soon, but I can tell you things almost certainly won’t be as bad as the doom and gloom crowd say it will be. But how can I know that?
Well, the answer is the title of this article: “The world doesn’t end all the time.” That’s a quote that stuck in my head from a conference I recently attended with Frontier Asset Management. It’s a reminder that despite predictions to the contrary, the world keeps on happily spinning, the sun rising and setting, and you and me going about our day to day lives. But why does the financial/economic/social/health catastrophe keep not coming? The reason is: People react to bad things happening.
Let me explain that a bit more. Let’s take the COVID outbreak of 2020 since that is in very recent memory. I’m sure you’ll remember folks talking about the imminent collapse of our health system, the streets filling with bodies, the economy folding in on itself, and the end of the world as we know it. Yet, a few months after the initial shock, the world was bumping along well enough that we ended up with an amazing year for the stock market. That end result came from the massive changes made by governments, NGO’s, businesses, and most importantly everyday people like you and me, so that the world wouldn’t end, and we could all have a tomorrow.
You see, doomsday only comes if people don’t react to the bad thing happening, and basic survival instincts practically guarantee we’ll react. The reaction might not be perfect, but it has always averted all out disaster. This is the same reason why there’s the old military adage that, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” Because once contact is made, the enemy starts reacting and there’s no way to perfectly predict what that reaction will be, only that it’s meant to stop whatever your plan is.
So, although current news may seem dire, or, at best, not as good as people hoped for, that doesn’t mean the numbers will keep going down. That’s because all the people, like you and me, behind those numbers are doing things that will ultimately lead to them going back up. And if anything, it’s when the doomsday prophets are at their loudest that we should lean the other direction and make a bet on things turning around.
So please, hold the course. I’m here to talk, listen, and meet with you. I am on your side and ready to be there every step of the way until the world feels less uncertain.