Market Outlook Fall 2021
Macroeconomic Committee
October 22, 2021
When we consider the past 20 months, not only the people of the world, but also the markets, have displayed considerable fortitude.
When we consider the past 20 months, not only the people of the world, but also the markets, have displayed considerable fortitude.
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.
Liquidity, liquidity, who’s got the liquidity?
Readers of somewhere around my years may remember playing the child’s game ‘button, button, who’s got the button?’, though it has its roots as far back as the late 1800s. In the game, only one child ends up with the button.
As for the Federal Reserve in the current economic crisis brought on by COVID-19, everyone gets liquidity.
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.
I enjoy writing the fourth quarter commentary; other than the highlights of the quarter, it provides an opportunity to look back at some of the prominent events of the entire year. And what a year it was.
Happy New Year, and Happy End of a Decade—and a pretty blow-out one at that. We find it both nostalgic and fruitful to look back at the past decade because it can help us refine and adjust our perspective for the year (and decade) to come.