I wrote the majority of this week’s Dividend Cafe before the news had broken that President Trump and First Lady Melania had tested positive for COVID. We wish them a speedy recovery, of course, but don’t have much to say about “market implications” of such, other than the obvious – more uncertainty, more volatility. I will hold off on political and market implications for a few days, for obvious reasons.

There are lessons from the COVID era that will stick with us forever. Most of them, mind you, if not all, were not new lessons - they were reminders - reaffirmations of timeless lessons and principles. I am not sure the way we were reminded of some of these lessons felt familiar. Markets do not often drop 36% in 31 days. But these general principles all held true, in spades.

In this week's very important Dividend Cafe, I am going to write about some of those lessons (not all of them), and transition that into an opportunity to MAGNIFY what we believe at The Bahnsen Group, what we are doing now, and how we are using the COVID moment to optimize client portfolios for the years to come, all by just MAGNIFYING what we have always believed.

This Operation Magnify that we have been developing for months is both a proactive and reactive process. We want to take new realities to their logical conclusions and apply them into an investor's portfolio, and we want to create an entirely consistent process and infrastructure by which we assess and administer this on behalf of our clients.

If you are not a client of ours, it really doesn't matter. The moment you are living in is a moment of paradigmatic change for investors. Viruses and the risk of viruses have always existed. "Tail risk" events that shock and awe markets have certainly always existed (and always will). But there are fundamental realities that have changed - many of which were well under way pre-COVID, I assure you - and the discussion in Dividend Cafe today is useful even for those not under our care.

The same is true of your approach to investing, and that is where we are going in today's Dividend Cafe.

Links mentioned in this episode: