April 16, 2020
By Peter Bower
The U.S. economy will reopen. Listening to the business channels, one can hear many pundits’ opinions as to how and when. The truth is no one knows. The Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury have stepped up, like never before, to help businesses bridge the time until more normal activity can resume. There will be damage to our economy. Some businesses will not reopen for a variety of reasons, however, most will and the sooner the better.
Reopening may happen in stages, regions, by locale, by sector, or some other means, probably combinations of all the possibilities. In the meantime, better therapies are being developed and explored. People know how to better protect themselves and will want to venture out to add more to their lives. Once contracting the virus can be seen as an acceptable risk, life will quickly approach normalcy.
The stock market is one of the best predictors of future business activity. Stock market investors seem to believe that it will not be too long, certainly not as long as many dire predictions. It is the collective wisdom of millions of investors with money on the line. Rather than listening to learned opinions, the Bull would rather pay attention to this collective assessment. The stock market seems to have bottomed in March and now is irregularly recovering. It will not be a straight line, there will be more scares, but it is recovering and so will the economy. Stay steady, my friends.
The Lonely Bull
