To Inform:

If it hasn’t come through in my Wealthnotes, I love to read. I’m currently reading a historical fiction novel by Stephen Pressfield called The Gates of Fire about the stand of 300 Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae. One thing that struck me in my reading is just how chaotic and unpredictable the ancient world was. Tribe against tribe, war, even against neighbors was a constant. “War season” was something the Spartans and their allies and enemies all prepared for. As I pondered this, I couldn’t help but think about how blessed we are to live on a continent with neighbors to our north and south that have no enmity with us. We have two oceans separating us from the rest of the world and a tremendous bounty of natural resources. Forests, mountains, a breadbasket that stretches for thousands of miles, and a people that put to flight two men in 1903 and landed on the moon less than seventy years later.

It’s easy in our business to get lost in the headlines. To miss the forest for the trees. Each day in markets can feel like a year. Sometimes, it helps to simply zoom out and take stock in the fact that whatever hardship, America always seems to find a way. At a client event we had the privilege of hosting earlier this week a particularly kind client said, “I don’t know what you’re doing to this market, but keep it up!” What I told this kind gentleman was that in this environment I’ve simply “gotten out of the way.” In practice, this means refusing to agonize over every headline or data point. Who would have guessed that just three months after a massive shift in US trade policy was announced and a brief flashpoint with Iran that the S&P 500 would be back to all-time highs? The chart below from Strategas shows that through last Friday, the S&P 500’s advance off the low hit on April 8^th is the fourth largest in history.

Source: Strategas

In Pressfield’s novel he records a speech given by King Leonidas to the 300 Spartans just before their march to the Hot Gates. Leonidas tells his men that, “Sweetest of all is liberty” and encourages them saying, “our fathers for twenty generations have breathed the blessed air of freedom and have paid the bill in full when it was presented. We, their sons, can do no less.” My hope is that this July 4^th weekend we can turn off our screens (after reading this, of course!) and take joy in the fact that we live in a country where we too can breathe “the blessed air of freedom” and to think how we might honor those who came before us to ensure this bounty. While we have only existed as a nation half as long as the loose Grecian tribes had at the Battle of Thermopylae, our future is no less bright, nor is our duty any less important.

Written by Alex Durbin, CFA, Chief Investment Officer