As you know social distancing is something that is highly promoted right now and therefore our office will be doing its part by postponing all our in-person meetings for the next three weeks. We are committed to keeping you informed and as such will be available by phone, email, or video conferencing should you wish to reach out to us. In the meantime, I will continue to send out weekly information pieces highlighting such topics as: your holdings, general market information, office news and our thoughts as this unfolds.
The good news is that we expect that we will recover, the economy will recover, we will come back from this, businesses will rebound, and this will happen fairly rapidly if we, as a society, make the right short-term decisions now. Short term decisions today will lead to a much better long-term outcome for all of us.
The impending recovery will depend on how long it takes for the crisis to pass. We can all do our part to bring the crisis to an end, and we don’t see an end in sight yet, but it will take time for the rebound to come to fruition.
The fact is the crisis can come to pass, the faster we will see the recovery take form, and we have seen this historically. We obviously saw this after the financial global crisis of 2008, we have seen this after 9/11, we saw this after the oil shocks in the early 70’s, and indeed we have seen this before in a very similar circumstance in the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.
When we look at any of these circumstances and you take a four year GDP number, the GDP growth figure from start to finish is about the same, your path to get there when you have a type of crisis like this, like a 9/11, like an oil shock, the path to get there will be much bumpier then any of us have imagined or wanted.
But at the end of the day, we expect that demand will come back, supply chains will get reestablished, and businesses will come out of this as strong and many will be stronger for their experience.
Investors must keep that long-term focus in mind, businesses must make the right decisions today to protect their long-term futures, and governments must be incredibly supportive in all of this. I would like to applaud the steps the Canadian government has taken so far and hopefully more will come today or tomorrow on the fiscal side as well.
Should you wish to set up a video conference or phone call to discuss things, please let us know.
Sincerely,
Paul Rowan
President, Chief Executive Officer
Chairman of Investment Committee
