Financial Matters

Making trade and investment decisions based solely on big events is hardly ever an effective strategy. Having said that, there were obvious concerns about how this year’s election would affect markets and planning strategies. The best thing to do would have been to pick an allocation which you felt comfortable with and ride whatever wave came along with the election results. Some investors sat the sidelines, some bought what they thought might be winners in whatever their assumed outcome scenario was. All in all, what occurred is what I mentioned in our previous election commentary blog – the markets only care that there IS a President.

On the heels of the first Presidential debate of the 2020 Election, investors are increasingly turning their attention to the election and the impact that the result will have on the stock market. It is understood that elevated uncertainty usually affects markets in a negative way bringing lower stock prices. But as we have seen throughout our experiences with COVID this year; stocks move based on expectations of the future.

Many have received the Economic Impact Payment from the IRS, while some still await their payment. Here are some facts that you should know:

Payments will be made throughout the rest of 2020. If you don’t receive a Payment this year, you can also claim it by filing a tax return for 2020 next year.

Although the CARES Act’s $2 trillion allocation to the economy has been compared to President Obama’s 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the more recent measure should be thought of as a relief effort, rather than economic stimulus. CARES is addressing the immediate fallout in the business world and in peoples’ personal finances, an attempt to cushion the impact of social distancing and the loss of work and business that it entails.

It is clear that any perceived direction of the trade talks or tweets from the President regarding tariffs are market movers. No one, with the exception of a few insiders, really knows the true status of the ongoing negotiations between the U.S. and China.

While you may have heard that the economic summit was contentious, to say the least, for the first time in nearly 3 decades the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation did not issue a communique. This was largely due to Chinese officials feeling they were singled out by the group for not being transparent.