Truepoint Talks: Tenets of Investing
The Truepoint team, led by Steve Condon, Scott Keller and Lauren Niestradt, hosted the fifth “Truepoint Talks” webinar with a focus on our key investment tenets. We are currently living through the most significant health crisis in literally a century. The medical experts are clearly preparing all of us for the fact that it will continue to get worse before it gets better. And the best protection we have currently is simply physical isolation, which has required shutting down at least a quarter of the economy. These are confusing and challenging times to say the least, especially given that much of what is happening is completely out of our control.
However, what is within our control is how we react to these circumstances. Experience tells us that when uncertainty is high, remaining rational is not easy. The key to not falling victim to the moment is having a core set of principles to guide you. This is as true for investing as it is for life in general. So rather than spend time speculating on a near term future that is inherently unknowable, we want to revisit our tenets of investing, those key principles that guide us regardless of the circumstances.
Here’s the full recording of the webinar below:
Despite the decidedly gloomy news right now on both the health and economic fronts, it is critical for investors to remain focused on the horizon off in the distance, and we’ve seen evidence of the longer-term view in the stock market recently. While the Coronavirus counts continue to grow, and the economy continues to post concerning figures, stocks have steadily improved. In fact, you might be surprised to learn that the S&P 500 is up over 21% in the last two weeks (as of April 7, 2020). You certainly wouldn’t know this by the headlines you see every day, but there are reasons to be encouraged and those reasons had been reflected in the financial markets. We certainly don’t know how this will play out over the coming months. No one does. But as our tenets of investing spell out, investment success does not require a crystal ball.
