Pillar Capital Blog

In twenty-six years of work as a financial advisor I have often been asked if we are near a peak. There probably were some “peaks” during that time – a peak prior to the dot.com bust in 2000, a peak prior to the 2008 global financial crisis and a peak prior to last year’s Covid-19 induced market sell-off. At the trough of each of those sell-off’s investors would likely have regretted that they “bought at the peak”, yet with the hindsight of decades there were no peaks – just momentary blips on the path to higher prices generated by global capitalism.

I wrote an article in February warning that public policy and a convergence of events would likely produce inflation after a forty-year dormancy. It now appears that the question is not if we have inflation but when it will be gone…

At the bottom of the great recession in the fall of 2008 and early spring of 2009 things looked bleak. Amazon - one of the brightest stars of our current rally along with it's FAANG+M companions (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google and Microsoft) was down over 60% from it's peak reached ten years earlier during the height of the dot-com boom. Similar stories could be told of the other FAANG+M companies which were publicly traded at the time...

This is the first time in my 25+ years as an investment advisor that I've written a newsletter or article about the boogeyman of past generations of retirees.

Few will cry when the clock strikes twelve on New Year's eve. As it draws to a close let's reflect on some of the 2020 uniqueness that doesn't regularly make the nightly news...

Unless something miraculous happens, we will have a new President of the United States come January 20th 2021. Donald Trump and his supporters have thrown a Hail Mary pass by filing legal challenges in several states that they contend were fraught with irregularities...