Macroeconomic Committee

Last quarter we made thematic references to “Back to the Future,” thinking perhaps the world was peeking around the corner at a return to some type of normalcy. As we start the second half of 2021, if our time traveler last quarter was dropped from the future into the Eastern United States today, odds are this traveler might not have a clue a pandemic just ravished the world.

Spring has sprung—weather-wise, spirit-wise, and market-wise. After a more than year-long pandemic, the markets are wanting to get Back to the Future.

On our minds is the power of the human spirit to endure and adapt. Be it pandemic, or political, the human spirit absorbs, processes, understands, and helps us form perspective. Perspective will be our theme.

This past year was not for the faint of heart. Lives were changed, and sadly, lives were lost. We will forever remember 2020, as will the history books.

Last quarter we started this Outlook with the following statement: Our thoughts could not be more focused…the virus is running the show. This Outlook could theoretically be a repeat story; COVID has changed life, and to this day, continues to influence everything we do and correspondingly how the markets perform.

A macro look at what’s to come in the markets and the economy.

What a long, strange trip it’s been. And we know we don’t need to tell you that—we’ve all been on this trip together. “Long” is the operative and ironic word, here, given that the past month has in many ways felt like years as we have ridden out the storms of each day and each week in an environment so foreign that it is hard to remember what “normal” felt like just a calendar page ago.