An Extraordinary Year from PBS' WealthTrack

For this first day of 2021 I must share yesterday's WealthTrack program on PBS hosted by Consuelo Mack. This program focuses on her most illustrious interviews this year, thereby providing yet another summary perspective on 2020.  Enjoy. Enjoy the weekend. Enjoy the New Year. 

Fri 1-1-21 AN EXTRAORDINARY YEAR - a message from Consuelo - December 31, 2020

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Sponsored by: December 31, 2020  Dear WEALTHTRACK Subscriber, By just about any measure 2020 has been an extraordinary year for all of us personally, professionally and financially. I hope and pray you have been able to come through it with your families and colleagues relatively unscathed.  If you were able to stay invested during the market selloff in February and March you should be ending the year with robust portfolio gains that few were able to anticipate when the pandemic struck. It reminds me of what the late, great financial historian Peter Bernstein told us in WEALTHTRACK’s early years: “The future is unknowable, the future is unknowable, the future is unknowable.” And yes, he did repeat it three times for emphasis! What did I relearn this year? Stuff happens and how important emergency funds are when they do. The incredible resiliency of the U.S. economy. The ingenuity of American people and businesses. And the recuperative powers of our capital markets. I also was reminded of how much policy can affect us. The unprecedented and unpredictable lockdowns and shutdowns of commerce and schools have wreaked still unassessable damage. However, the historic monetary and fiscal response has prevented economic collapse and provided financing for recovery.  Wall Street’s #1 ranked economist for 40 years, Ed Hyman has been tracking 2020’s events on a daily basis. To greet the New Year we are revisiting our recent, rare in-depth interview with him. No one explains what we have been through better nor why events have set us up for a possible blowout economy in 2021.  In case you missed it, Hyman is Vice Chairman of Evercore, a leading independent investment banking and advisory firm. He is the Founder and Chairman of its Evercore ISI division and leads its economic research team which publishes daily reports considered to be must-reads by institutional investors. In part 1 of our interview he shared his outlook for the economy in 2021, which he expects to be a blowout in the second half due to the combination of a vaccine, massive monetary and fiscal stimulus and rising home and stock prices. He cautioned, however that there would still be considerable pain until then because of high unemployment, rising rates of COVID and continuing aftershocks from business shutdowns.  This week, in part 2 he will share his fifty years of economic perspective on the extraordinary events of 2020 and how the pandemic has changed the economy and markets. It is a fascinating conversation with one of the best business cycle analysts of our era.   If you miss the show on public television, you can watch it on our website over the weekend.  You can also find the WEALTHTRACK podcast on Stitcher and SoundCloud as well as iTunes and Spotify. Thank you for spending your precious time with us during this tumultuous year. We pray that we can all return to some sense of normalcy in 2021. We intend to continue talking to the best minds in finance throughout, and help us all make the year ahead a healthy, profitable and productive one. Best regards, Consuelo