This week’s The Distillery is brought to you by one of our clients, Roxanne. She is officially our first client to test positive for the virus and has graciously shared her COVID-19 experience with us. She even offered to share it with all of you in hopes it can help anyone in the coming weeks/months. We appreciate her candid account of her experience and hope that you do as well. If you would like to get in touch with her to discuss further, she has offered to share her email. Lastly, I know I speak for everyone here at The Advocates when I say that we're thankful for all of you and wish you a happy and healthy holiday weekend!

Today’s Distillery hits home for me, so I wanted to share my research in case you or someone you know is in a similar situation. We have an aunt in her early 60’s staying with us from another country. When all this COVID-19 stuff started to happen, she did not want to risk flying back to her country of residence to quarantine there. So, she is quarantining with us for the foreseeable future.

Today's Distillery is something we're all familiar with, but likely hasn't been on our radar for a while to the general calm in the world only a few months ago: Identity theft. Identify Thieves seem to thrive in times of uncertainty when us humans are at our most emotional. With COVID-19, stimulus packages, changes to retirement account rules, credit and loan issues, etc. all taking place recently, we want you to know your options and have a plan in place ahead of time.  Speaking of identity thieves, I hope you enjoy the featured image for today's blog. You can never be too careful around these guys...

Now that we've settled into the beginnings of whatever this initial move up in stocks will be called in the future when hindsight is 20/20, we thought it timely to distill an article about the infamous "Dead Cat Bounce." Like most quality investment pieces (in my opinion), the article offers up more of a what not to believe, opposed to what's going to happen. All we know is that no one knows for sure how this will play out, but a proper portfolio strategy is integral to making it to the other side, when it so presents itself.

Happy Monday. Today’s Distillery is a collection of famous investment quotes accumulated over the many years of stock market history. At times like these it’s nice to look back and read the wisdom of yesterday, which certainly applies to today, and will hopefully always apply to the future. Enjoy.

As many of you have seen, the Senate recently passed the CARES Act. While it is not yet final and may still undergo a few structural changes, the essence of the bill is in place and individuals and businesses can start assessing how it impacts them.

There is A LOT to digest, and we will certainly explore how this impacts each of your plans, but there will likely be something in this bill that effects everyone, even if minimally. You can read a decent summary of the bill in a piece the Tax Foundation put together yesterday.

Hope all is well in your remote worlds.

Today’s Distillery feels like an appropriate topic as we (as of this writing) are currently experiencing our second consecutive up day in the markets. I think I speak for everyone when I say I’m operating at a more relaxed level today.

But let’s also be honest, we don’t know where the market will end up today, let alone a month from now. While we’re all still coming to terms with what this “new-normal” actually means mid and long term, I want to offer up two planning strategies that we at The Advocates think appropriate to consider given the current market environment.

A Distillery on a Tuesday, whaaaaat? That’s right, we have quite a lot of news to distill lately, so we’re moving to a more frequent format for the time being. We hope you appreciate the increased commentary. 

Today’s The Distillery is an excerpt from a recent “Ask me anything” session on Reddit this week with Bill Gates. We all know Gates as the founder of Microsoft, but after “retiring” Gates has been even more focused on world health and wellness initiatives via the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As outspoken advocates on preparing for potential outbreaks such as this one, Gates offers up his encouraging opinion on the present situation.

Despite a nice recovery day on Tuesday, it now appears that the investment markets are in full panic mode, the result of the World Health Organization declaring the Covid-19 virus to be a global pandemic.  Traders on Wall Street are selling at virtually any price, which is causing the markets to drop into bear market territory.

The long bull run that started in March 2009, and set many records along the way, is now officially over.  May it rest in peace; we will all remember it fondly.