Uncertainty and Resilience: Lessons from March 2020

Reflecting on the Pandemic Market Bottom: Lessons for Today

In this episode of ‘Barenaked Money,’ hosts Josh Sheluk and Colin White, along with guest Matt Kempton, delve into the complexities and insights surrounding the five-year anniversary of the pandemic market bottom. Recorded on April 3rd, the discussion kicks off with a reflection on March 23, 2020, a critical day in market history. The trio discusses their personal and professional experiences during the pandemic, emphasizing the challenges investors faced in predicting market behavior. They highlight key lessons learned, such as the futility of market timing and the importance of diversification. The episode also draws parallels between the uncertainty of the pandemic era and today’s market conditions, underlining common investment mistakes driven by fear and panic. The conversation concludes with a forward-looking perspective on how to navigate current market uncertainties, reinforcing the value of staying calm and focused on long-term strategies.

00:00 Introduction to Barenaked Money
00:21 Reflecting on the Pandemic Market Bottom
03:04 Lessons from Market Cycles
08:29 Applying Past Lessons to Today’s Market
19:55 The Importance of Diversification
23:21 Looking Ahead: Market Predictions
31:27 Final Thoughts and Advice
32:21 Disclaimer and Closing Remarks

This transcript has been automatically generated.

Kathryn Toope: Welcome to Bare Naked Money, the podcast where we strip down the complex world of finance to its bare essentials with your hosts, Josh Shelik and Colin White, portfolio managers with Veracan Capital Management Inc.

Josh Sheluk: Welcome to the next episode of Barenaked Money. I’m joined by Matt Kempton today, portfolio manager with the team, and it’s a very exciting day on the markets. We’ll get to that shortly. Recording this April 3. But, Matt, a couple weeks ago, you reminded me that it was a very special five year anniversary.

What was that five year anniversary a couple weeks ago?

Matthew Kempton: Yeah. The anniversary of what was also ultimately a very special day in the markets, and that was the market bottom of the pandemic period, 03/23/2020, ‘5 years ago now, which it feels like a lifetime ago in some ways. In other ways, it actually feels like, you know, the memories are still there in a day like today where we’re seeing a lot of red on the screen. You know, those feelings come right back.

Josh Sheluk: Yeah. It’s a period of time, an entire year that I blocked out of my memory entirely. So you’ll really have to carry this podcast more so for personal reasons than for market related reasons, but but I digress. So it was it was March 2030 said, I think. Right?

That was the absolute bottom in the markets at that time?

Matthew Kempton: That’s right. That that day, March 23, which, you know, that day, of course, where alarms went off, the green light came on and said, everyone, this is the day that that everything has changed. But I didn’t feel that way on that day. And I don’t know if you did in in March 24 despite the market going up some that day. Nothing said this is the end of the market going down.

You can start. It’s okay now. We’re gonna start moving higher and moving higher pretty rapidly as well.

Josh Sheluk: Yep. Yep. Yeah. At the time and still to this day, the most rapid bear market and recovery from a bear market in all of history. So it happened really in the blink of an eye when you look at it going backwards.

And it’s funny you say March 23 and March 24 wasn’t that day where you had the alarm bells going off. Well, neither was March 25, and neither was March 26, and neither was April 26. There was no real indication that, hey, we’ve we’ve bottomed. This is it. Markets are going higher from here, especially because we are all still locked down at home.

Economies were sort of in panic mode at that time. We didn’t know it at the time, but sure enough that March 23 day would have been an amazing day to throw a bunch of money in the market and wake up today or five years later with a handsome return.

Matthew Kempton: Absolutely. I mean, March 23, we didn’t have a vaccine. You know, we did not have any of these things that we are now

Josh Sheluk: We didn’t even have work from home. We were working We barely had anything. We didn’t have work from home. We didn’t have video. We didn’t have ways to communicate with people.

We didn’t have Zoom. We didn’t have Teams. We didn’t have any of that stuff.

Matthew Kempton: And if you did, you’re still trying to unmute yourself to get into a call. This was not a time where you thought this is all done with. I mean, the word depression was being thrown around and not just emotionally how people were feeling, but economic depression, like all together. It was a very challenging period. And I think it’s important to reflect on it though, because it’s such a reminder that we can’t time the market and we don’t necessarily understand when things are going to turn, how quickly they’re going to turn, and why this occurred.

And we as investors are doing our best to every day take a look and understand the landscape. So are all professional investors. And when you look back to that period, I mean, those that have been through so many of these cycles with and have in some ways made a lot of made a lot of their fortune through them, many of them looking back did not didn’t handle this as as you thought they might through it, you know, textbook performance of others. I mean, I remember Bill Ackman calling for, let’s just close the market down. Billionaire hedge fund investors, let’s just close it down for a week.

We just don’t know what’s going on. Close this thing, and then we’ll come back to it when things calm down. Never heard of something like that before, but that’s that’s where people’s mindset was at for that period.

Josh Sheluk: Yeah. Very well. And I think it’s important to just put a pin on exactly what this means in terms of market returns. I I looked up the MSCI World, some sort of global stocks, just before the call here. And, as of yesterday’s close from that low point on March 23 up until yesterday, the the global stock market was up about a 50%, very close to that.

So that’s and that’s, again, just over five years. So pretty remarkable return that you would have missed out on if you had have had some type of emotional response and sold and sat on the sidelines potentially over this period of time.

Matthew Kempton: Well, that’s exactly right. Or or even, again, if you tried to follow the professionals. I mean, Warren Buffett has made his money in many cases through these periods. You know, you think about 02/2008, the the Buy America article where, listen, it’s time to get into the market, and he didn’t get the market bottom quite right, but he was buying when others weren’t. He wasn’t he wasn’t investing any money through that through that spring period.

And you have Stanley Druckenmiller, maybe one of the greatest traders of all time. Distinctly remember the interview in April where he said, this is the worst setup for equities he’s seen in his entire career. And there was good reason for him to say something like that, but he was wrong. Looking back now, we can say, you know, he was he was wrong with that statement. And so, you know, when the when the absolute when those with some of the best track records of all time are, you know, saying saying this is not a time to buy, but then but they can be wrong too.

I guess it’s a big point here is, hey. Even the best can be wrong as well.

Josh Sheluk: Yeah. Very difficult. So, again, we’re sitting here today. We had liberation day as some will who wanted to call it yesterday, and I think there’s a lot of parallels that we can we can draw from this past experience. But still sticking with that five year ago period, when we look back now, do you think that there’s, like, a smoking gun?

Like, we we should have realized that this was the bottom, or or it was this type of event or this type of activity that that led it to be the bottom? Do you do you think we can tell that in hindsight today?

Matthew Kempton: I think the one thing you could maybe point to is you had real support from central banks to get through a period like this so that they would they would do their best to create liquidity, that they would do everything they could in terms of managing interest rates, and that people really grabbed on to that as a bit of a sign, some faith to say, okay, this might get us through. In the end, I don’t think that’s enough to truly drive a market higher as it did, but that might be the one shift that started to occur around there that just gave people, frankly, some hope, I would think. And despite the economy still effectively being closed and unemployment numbers skyrocketing and all of this that was happening, central banks in some ways said, we have your back, and that might have been enough to get investors back in.

Josh Sheluk: It’s interesting because it might just have been that the market was down 30%. Like, that that might have been the reason that it was the bottom. Because when you think about, like, what what what the market being down 30% is is telling you is that all of these global companies in aggregate, when you add them all up, the value of all of them is 30% lower on March 23 than it was, say, two months earlier. Thirty percent’s a lot. It takes a lot for a company’s profitabilities and revenues to be impacted to to that extent.

So that’s when we talk about buying opportunities. At some point, things just become cheap enough and overdone enough that they’re attractive again, and people pull their heads back above water or out of the sand or wherever their heads are sitting at the time and and decide that, yeah, it’s okay. We’ll we’ll get back on the street. And so hard to know exactly what that day is.

Matthew Kempton: Well, exactly. And to that, what was also interesting is 30% or so is about the average experience that a market will draw down through a recession. And it went almost to that average experience. And I don’t know if that was somehow investors knowing that and saying, we’re there. Or if it just happened to be this is a case of you had about an average experience, but that’s that’s about that level.

So that was it was interesting as well to see, you know, ultimately, that being where as far as we went, but having no idea at the time.

Josh Sheluk: Let’s transition this to today because we’re sitting here. The market’s down, whatever it is, down a few percent at this exact moment, And there’s a lot of emotional selling, maybe we can call it as of today, based off of yesterday evening’s, tariff no news where there’s basically tariffs on every country that’s, exporting goods into The US at this point. So give me three lessons from 2020 that we can apply to today, where there’s sort of similar parallels.

Matthew Kempton: Maybe it’s one big lesson that ultimately subs into three, or or the first lesson at least is uncertainty is always present. And at some points, it feels more present than others. I mean, very much today, there’s no question that everyone feels unsure of what does this mean? What’s going to happen next? I when we’re done our call, if I refresh my browser, what’s the new headline that has just come out like that?

That’s very much where we’re at. That’s where we were at for different reasons five years ago as well. I mean, what was going on then? We had never this was an experiment really for the global economy, maybe as this is, I suppose. There are the hundred years prior, there were tariffs that were put on to this level.

Well, a hundred years prior to the pandemic, we were looking at the Spanish flu and say, well, that’s kind of what we can draw some conclusions to. The economy looks very different today than it did a hundred years ago, though. So we there isn’t really maybe there you wouldn’t say there’s precedent for this, and you didn’t for the pandemic either, but we got through it. And markets move quicker than they don’t need to see the resolution of the event to move. They they always will move sooner.

They’re always looking ahead. I mean, market started to pull back before in twenty twenty five years ago before things you know, before before we all were sent home, you know, the the bear market had almost begun, and it and it started its way back up into a bull market well before anything had been resolved. My wedding was still being rescheduled through that period. We weren’t able to Yeah. Gather.

We weren’t able to do, you know, any of these things, but the market had said, we’re getting we’re going somewhere up. You know? We’re going to have going to have, you know, a resolution to this and and market recognizing that. And and to this, I mean, at some point, maybe that’s today, but we’re we’re in a point of we’re in a period of uncertainty, but that will never be out of that period fully. And we feel it a lot today.

And that’s part of why you’re seeing such drastic moves in many stocks here today and in overall markets, but uncertainty is always present. And if you’re waiting for that to go away to get into the market, well, you’ll be on the sidelines forever. That that’s

Josh Sheluk: just Yeah. Be waiting a really long time. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

And people say this to me. Our clients say this to me all the time. Like, it feels like a very uncertain time right now, and I try to reinforce, like, it’s always uncertain. If it’s not tears today, it’s gonna be something else tomorrow. Like and just think of what we’ve gone through the past five years.

We went through the pandemic, then we hit this period of a very high inflation, coupled with, wars, multiple wars popping off around the world. And now we have tariffs here today. I think there’s just always gonna be an event or or an issue or a concern or a worry at any given point in time. And you’re absolutely right. You can’t be waiting for that worry to be gone, before you make them you know, you make an investment decision.

Matthew Kempton: So I think that’s the main takeaway. I mean, do you have do you have others you’d I mean, that are related or or or separate from that? Do you take from it?

Josh Sheluk: I think that everything’s gonna be related to that idea, but the the big thing for me is you don’t wanna panic during periods of time like this because as we often say, emotion destroys wealth. That type of panic and that that fear induced investment decision, almost certainly gonna be a bad one. I I don’t think I’ve ever seen somebody make an investment decision in fear that’s worked out in their in their best interest. Even if

Matthew Kempton: you But they’ll tell you. But three years later, they’ll tell you, I sold that out the right remember how I told you to sell at the right time, and I bought back Yep. And don’t go look at the statements, though. Don’t go at the trade conference.

Josh Sheluk: No. No.

Matthew Kempton: No. But if

Josh Sheluk: Yeah. Well, my next point was gonna be even if you manage to sell at exactly the right time, the chances of you getting back in at the right time are gonna be very, very, very unlikely. Can you imagine if you sold in, like, 01/01/2020, and then everyone’s at home from the pandemic? Like, everything’s been shut down. All the sports leagues, the offices are all all shut down.

Nobody’s on the road. You’re gonna tell me at March 23 comes around, and you’re gonna be like, you know what? I was totally right in January. I’m gonna be buying it back into the market right now. Like, nobody’s gonna do that.

Matthew Kempton: No. And you know what? This just sort of hitting me. So let me talk through this, and and maybe it will make sense or maybe it won’t. But if to that to that sell that you might do, and maybe you get it somewhat right that you say it’s time to go to cash.

But what’s driving that? It’s probably fear’s driving that a bit or the anticipation of fear. It’s like, it’s one of the it’s a maybe it’s a little bit of both. But to buy well, you have to take the complete opposite action, which is to buy when that feeling has come the feeling you thought was going to come and has basically peaked. Is crescendoed and you’re going to say, now I sold because it was I felt fear.

Now I’m going to buy because I feel fear. Yeah. And I don’t just I just don’t think that that’s just not congruent. That’s just I don’t think someone can do both of those things. You might you might be good at one side of it.

Whether that’s there’s so much fear I can buy or there’s so little fear I should sell but to be one to be one who can do both I I’m not sure that anyone holds both of those those sides within them it’s just too hard

Josh Sheluk: yeah very difficult and

Matthew Kempton: did I come

Josh Sheluk: up with something there well no I think that makes sense because you actually you have to kind of buy at the maximum pessimism. Right? As as we say, you know, but as you you can say the cliche any way you want, buy when there’s blood in the streets, whatever it is. Right. So I think there’s there’s some truth to that for sure.

The thing is even if you get it right once like, let’s say you go through one cycle and you get it right once, the chances of you getting that right repeatedly or consistently, very, very low. Like, almost as close to zero as you can get. And it only takes one miss to really blow up the investment strategy in in sort of a catastrophic way. So Exactly. Something to be very careful with.

You know, we’re talking about market timing, basically, especially around emotional periods like this. I I think maybe the the biggest takeaway if I could tell and and no this has never helped anybody. But if I could say one thing to people is, like, don’t panic. That’s not gonna help you really. Then those words are probably not going to to make you not panic, but it really needs to be sort of level headed investment decision making at the moment.

I think also it’s worth mentioning and worth reminding people, the as you said, uncertainty is ever present. There’s always gonna be periods of time like this that just, you know, pop up out of the blue. Even though this one was we’re gonna look back and people are gonna say, well, this was very telegraphed. But to know that this was the day that all these tariffs were put in place when we’ve been talking about it for six months, it seems. I I don’t know that that’s exactly true, but it does reinforce or remind us that if you have short term needs for for cash, for money, for whatever it is, that’s best suited for for a cash like investment, like a savings account type of thing.

That’s not something that you want in the markets because COVID happens, and all of a sudden, your portfolio is down 30%. It takes a while to recover. So, it it does reinforce and remind us that that’s something to not be complacent about, I guess.

Matthew Kempton: Yeah. I would absolutely agree with that that we know periods like March 2020 can happen. They have happened, and they they potentially happen again. And and, you know, the sell off of of this period here, it’s still it’s been fast. It doesn’t look like it hasn’t yet at least looked like that period, and we don’t know that it will.

But if you have short term needs, you don’t want to be subject to, well, what’s the right day in this month to get to get that money out for the car I’m looking to buy or the trip I’m looking to take. That plan should have already been in place and liquidity available to to make sure that that amount that money is stable because this the time horizon here for what this period looks like, we we don’t know. And the market risk shouldn’t be taken for money that that has a has a need in a very short term. So, absolutely, that was that was a big lesson. I always knew that, I suppose, but March 2020 really made that more clear to me.

And I think to clients, oh, yeah. If I have something coming up, let’s make sure we have a cash plan for that, whether that’s one or maybe two years, there’s a safety net there that that should exist just for for the unknown.

Josh Sheluk: Yeah, for sure. And I think that how big the safety net is depends on one your risk tolerance, but also how flexible your your sort of spending needs are. So if you have more rigid spending needs where there’s not a lot of flexibility, you can’t really change them even eighteen months out, then you probably wanna have a little bit more cash on hand. If the goal eighteen months out is to buy a new boat and you’re comfortable deferring that for a year, then maybe you you shrug if the market’s down and say, yeah. I’ll do that next year when the market’s back up.

So there can be some art to that idea of how much do you set aside as well.

Matthew Kempton: But Josh, how much are boats gonna cost next year with all these new tariffs?

Josh Sheluk: That’s a really good question. Too soon, not too soon.

Matthew Kempton: Fair enough. Fair enough.

Josh Sheluk: Yeah. Yeah. I I I think another thing that the and we’re kinda seeing it today, but something that we saw in the the pandemic period was that there can be some very material dislocations. So even in the market as a whole recovered relatively quickly that time around, but there were still some areas in the market that were left totally out of whack. And and even here today are are still out of whack, and you can look at some real estate, for example, like office real estate, some of the retail spaces, more bricks and mortar retail.

That’s pretty out of whack. At the time, it was energy prices that were totally askew, like negative prices for barrels of oil, which was totally bizarre. Now that fixed itself, so to speak, a lot more quickly than some of the office, real estates, issues have, but that’s another thing where these very sort of global shock events, if we wanna call them that, there can be some pretty severe dislocations in in some more specific spots in the market.

Matthew Kempton: Yeah. That’s a great point. And so this doesn’t mean whatever this is right now, there there may be lasting impacts to some sectors, countries, or we just don’t know. It won’t necessarily all spring back to this is how the economy will go back to. So we do have to be mindful of that, that there may be changes that come from it and have to be aware of that.

But I think it also speaks to the importance of diversification Yep. Into a period well, just as a as a default because we because we don’t know. I mean, like you say, energy, you know, if you were a very Canadian focused investor for in 2020, You felt it quite a bit more than many global peers because of your your energy allocation you’d have within your portfolio. It would have been you know, it would just be significant to to follow ups here in Canada. And, there was a period where, like you say, oil prices went negative, and that part of your portfolio was really, really damaged with not sure where it was going.

Didn’t think it made any sense, but didn’t know how what the resolution looked like. So diversification, I mean, different pieces in the portfolio, your experience doesn’t have to be like the headline reads when you when you open up Bloomberg or you open up any other new source. Diversification can it can and really does soften that, as much as that’s maybe it’s overused. It it truly is the not the free lunch you get in investing, but it is it is the one it it’s one of the only benefits you you can you can find that can take some risk away when we just don’t know, which is always.

Josh Sheluk: Are you you said Canada’s up today. I see it down a couple percent. Am I missing something there? Are you looking at a different Canada than me?

Matthew Kempton: I’m seeing us up. If I got a live quote, I’m up I’m seeing this up up. My browser hadn’t refreshed. We might not be. No.

We’re down. We are down.

Josh Sheluk: You were you were very optimistic on Canada for a second there. But no. I think the diversification part of it, I think, kinda brings these lessons full circle. Right? The the first thing you said is uncertainty is ever present, and and I think diversification kinda ties a bow in that.

It’s like, how do you deal with that uncertainty that’s ever present and periods of time like this and periods of time like COVID and periods of time like literally every other time is by having proper diversification. Because if you were all in oil, for example, leading into COVID, you got ruined. Like, there’s no there’s no recovering from negative oil for you, I don’t think. And if you were all in office real estate, well, you’re probably really, really challenged if you had a little bit of leverage on on that office real estate. But by diversifying, you might have exposure to some of this stuff, but you have exposure to the things that are working as well, like the work from home type stuff.

And then today’s kind of the opposite. Like, we’re seeing some of the more interest rate sensitive parts of the market like real estate do reasonably well today, and bonds, like you said, do reasonably well today. So that’s where the diversification kinda saves you. There’s always the diversification by by definition. You’re always gonna have something that’s not doing as well as other parts of your portfolio, but you’re always gonna have something that’s doing better than everything else in your portfolio as well.

And that’s that’s extremely important because as we say time and time again, it’s not it’s often not hitting the home run that’s gonna to build and preserve your wealth. It’s it’s just avoiding blowing it up and and making consistently smart decisions. It might not always be the optimal decision, but it’s always it’s always a reasonable decision anyway.

Matthew Kempton: Exactly. And when, know, when you think about our role in managing wealth, I think that’s that’s the one key way to do it is avoiding the blowups, and diversification allows us to do that.

Josh Sheluk: So we sit here today again, April 3. Where do we go from here? What do you think is next?

Matthew Kempton: I think we’re all gonna be glued to to the news for the next little while and watching some whipsawing of headlines, which will translate into the market. I think we’re going to have it’ll feel like a little more of a resolution in this spring. I think we’ll get to a place of, okay, it might not look like it did six months prior, but it will look like a place where businesses at least can make a decision, whatever that decision is, say, it might feel like they have a little more clarity in terms of policy, terms of path forward. And that doesn’t necessarily mean things are great for be it economy or the market, but it might just be a little bit more of a every day and and within intraday, things aren’t changing so much. I I don’t think we can do four years of of this much of this much back and forth, but I might be wrong.

What what do you think?

Josh Sheluk: Yeah. This all seems a bit contrived. In some ways, it’s it’s it’s very different than the pandemic era. Obviously, in a lot of ways, it’s very different than that. It’s interesting because when Colin and I recorded a podcast a couple weeks ago, he was saying a pandemic type of event is easier to deal with because everyone bands together for sort of a common force, which there’s some truth to that.

But I I just think that type of period is so damaging economically that it’s it’s really hard to deal with. Whereas today, it seems like we may have the tools more readily at hand, like, I e, just making different decisions that can pull us out of this period of time relatively quickly. So I guess kind of the same thing that you’re say saying is we may have a resolution sooner than we think with this or not. Yeah. We’re kinda prepared for everything, but it it’s it’s another one that’s that’s tough.

It’s just tough to predict, and it’s another reason why we were we’d not be a proponent of, like, selling the cash or something like that because all of a sudden, someone changes their mind two weeks from now, removes a bunch of tariffs, and away we go. It’s hard to know. It’s hard to know for sure that that’s not gonna happen, and you can say, well, I’ll just wait for that to happen. Too late. Too late.

If you’re waiting for stuff, as you said before, to to be less less uncertain or more certain, it’s gonna be too late. The market’s already going to have rallied, in your stead. So it’s gonna be an interesting one. I I can tell you for sure. I will not be glued to my TV or my news feed.

I’m I’m just not gonna pay that much attention to it because there’s not a whole lot of decisions to make from an investment perspective, and I’m really not that interested in whatever gets applied at what time to what country and what industry.

Matthew Kempton: Yeah. Fair enough. And and, you know, that’s an interesting point Colin made, but I I think, you know, I think I’d take this period over that period because we both had economic uncertainty. But at least through this one, I’m I’m not worried about going to the grocery store, and they don’t have any toilet paper. I’m not worried about walking down the sidewalk and having to move over to the road because I saw someone else coming near me or any of the other strange things that were happening.

Josh Sheluk: But where do we import our toilet paper from? We I don’t I don’t know where we import our toilet paper from. That could be a huge issue.

Matthew Kempton: No. We’ve got some that’s made right here in Atlantic Canada. We so there’s we’re close to a supplier of that. So I Alright. Toilet paper wise, I think we’re okay.

Other than that, I’m back to the boats and others. I don’t I don’t quite know.

Josh Sheluk: It’s good. This is a really good question you had, added to our outline here. If you could go back and tell yourself something five years ago, what would you what would you tell yourself?

Matthew Kempton: I think it would just have to be it’s going to be okay. Like, it it it was a truly hard period. Like, it was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. And because of just the economic uncertainty, the maybe the career uncertainty, the the emotional uncertainty, I mean, the health uncertainty and and just combine all of that together and you’re trapped in your home and you can’t even have an outlet with your friends like you otherwise would have and go to you’re joining them on a Zoom party and it’s just the most absurd period that this will end. And I and and through it, tried to have that faith.

I mean, you I’m sure you had people in your life who would say no one will ever travel again. This is the way it is now. And I I never took that. I mean, I’m just too much of a dumb optimist to ever take a stance like that. It maybe it made sense to think that way at that time, but I just felt no people that’s not how people are.

People need to get back to socializing to doing the things they enjoy, and I don’t know when we’ll get there, but I’m quite sure we will. And the depths, it was you didn’t know that. And so the the money the, you know, the economic part mattered and but all the other parts were probably more important and more of just ever just present right in your face that you couldn’t leave the house, and it was it was tough. So probably just it’s gonna be okay. What about you?

Josh Sheluk: I’d probably tell myself this period of time is gonna suck. Yeah. Yeah. Just to mentally prepare myself for because I think I went in. It was whatever.

April, let’s say, of COVID. And again, I’m like you probably on the optimistic side of things and thinking, okay, by by June, this will be good. Yeah. And then June came and I was like, okay. Well, but July, it’s gonna be good.

And then it was okay. Well, by October, this has gotta be good. Right? And I think my wife and I had a flight plan to to Hawaii in October, November of that year. And when so when COVID hit, I was like, okay.

Well, at least we’re six months away from that. It’s not gonna be a problem. So I think I would need some mental preparation to know how shitty things are gonna be over the next couple years, but followed up closely with, but it’s all gonna be okay. And then the other thing that I would tell myself is I I don’t know. I I can’t remember now which which countries or or areas of the world really kinda thrived through COVID, but I’d probably tell myself, go move there for a couple years, come back in a couple years, and and you’ll be happier for it.

Matthew Kempton: Yeah. I mean, you’re right though. That cycle of just it’s gonna be better in at this time, especially because we were planning a wedding, so we kept having to push it. So

Josh Sheluk: well Yeah. That’s brutal. I can’t imagine that.

Matthew Kempton: It’ll be good by then, and then it no. We’ve got a rules of change. And then but you might remember there were these flare ups too. And so it was okay. And then all of a sudden, it was, oh, no.

We’re in this other what are they? Phases, whatever they call them that just kept coming. That was tough. The other thing I would tell myself with the benefit of hindsight is buy, buy, buy. In there.

Put some money to work. Yeah. It’s, you don’t realize it, but it’s a good buying opportunity.

Josh Sheluk: Yeah. Yeah. And I think those I the market’s not really down that much yet. Like, it’s nowhere close to 30% drawdown or down, you know, five to 10% depending on the market that you’re looking at so far this year. So it’s not that pound the table buy type of opportunity, but I I think the other sentiments that we’re saying here, like, it’s gonna be okay.

Things might be rocky for a little while. They might get worse from here. We don’t know. But they’re gonna be okay. And at some point, there’s there’s gonna be a time where we look back and say, well, that was an incredibly attractive time to invest, and we just don’t know exactly when that’s gonna be.

Matthew Kempton: Yeah. I I hope we’ll do a five I hope we won’t do a five year anniversary

Josh Sheluk: Call this.

Matthew Kempton: Of this date because it won’t be significant enough to even think about a five it won’t even resonate that, oh, that was five years ago. Yeah. Because this this really will just be a bit of a blip on

Josh Sheluk: a of time. He hear Liberation Day is actually going to be made a holiday going forward? So we might have to celebrate it every year.

Matthew Kempton: Well, there we go. There’s something good that came with this, I guess. Yeah. Close the market. There we go.

Close the market. Yeah.

Josh Sheluk: Again, I think we just leave everybody with the ideas that as dark as things can look at times, we’ll look back and say that that was, you know, maybe not nearly as bad or catastrophic or damaging as we should have thought from a financial perspective. The global economy and companies around the world are incredibly good at finding ways around challenges and issues and continuing to be profitable and make money. And, ultimately, that’s what’s gonna gonna drive economies and stock markets forward, and that’s why I have optimism today.

Matthew Kempton: I couldn’t say any better. So maybe with that, we sign off.

Speaker 4: We didn’t like the way investment management firms worked in Canada, so we built Verecan, something different. You can find us at AnnoyingtheCompetition.com.

Kathryn Toope: For more information on the subject of today’s podcast or any other financial topic, please visit us online at Verecan.com. That’s verecan.com. There’s plenty of information there, or you can reach out to someone on the team. Thanks for listening. Please note, the information provided in this podcast is for general information purposes only.

It is not intended as financial investment, legal tax, accounting, or other professional advice. Our discussions are not a solicitation to buy or sell any securities or to make any specific investments. Any decisions based on information contained in this podcast are the sole responsibility of the listener. We strongly advise consulting with a professional financial adviser before making any financial decisions. Listeners should be aware that investing involves risks and that past performance is not indicative of future results.

Barenaked Money is produced by Verecan Capital Management Inc, a licensed portfolio management company in Canada. We operate under the regulatory framework established by the provincial securities commissions in the provinces within which we operate. The views expressed in the podcast are our own and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any regulatory authority. Remember, at Verecan Capital Management Inc, we focus on aligning our goals with yours, prioritizing integrity and transparency. For more information about us and our services, please visit our website.

Thank you for listening, and let’s continue to challenge the norms of the financial services industry together.