Poor 2020. You get no respect. You were ushered in with great fanfare, but became a target of contempt and marked as a year that will live in infamy.
It wasn’t all bad, though. You did deliver for investors. Who would have thought, with everything that transpired, that the S&P 500 would finish the year up 18% on a total return basis! And the positive YTD returns were achieved in the final two months of the year!
When we wrote our previous market commentary back in March, we were hopeful that the financial markets would quickly recover from the exogenous shock of COVID-19. Broadly speaking, US stock and bond markets have largely recovered. At this juncture, though, many are questioning the sustainability of the recovery in financial markets absent a full economic reopening.
March 25, 2020 To Our Friends and Clients, In the past month we have all been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic: financially, socially, emotionally and, sadly, physically even unto death. In the financial markets we have witnessed panic selling of almost everything, except Treasury bonds, and market dislocations. Market and economic forecasts have been all…