Another week and yet more, much needed, government spending initiatives…

It is slightly surreal, seeing our government functioning well through a crisis.  There are always a few niggles and point scoring but the LNP, Labour party and unions with the co-operation of the states, all seem to be focused on the job at hand, which is getting our little country through this period with as little health impact as possible.

The economic impact is going to be big, and pretty soon the ‘R’ word will be big news in the media. 

Spoiler alert, we are already in recession.  Just walk down any main street in Australia and I reckon it is fairly obvious.  This will however be a big headline in the news cycle when it comes out.

A technical recession is two negative quarters of GDP growth in a row but I really don’t think we need to wait for these numbers to know and feel the impact of an economy that has screeched to a halt. 

Unemployment has exploded and the federal government has become the de-facto bank for these displaced workers and a large number of businesses.

Office update – Yep, still here!

Regular morning meetings on zoom and lots of new technological skills being tried by the team.  We have a team in the office each day and a team working from home but all are working despite some of the challenges.  Brooke and Josh have been regularly taking on the border patrols and so far haven’t been caught (they live in the Tweed) and Hannah is working out of her parent’s house in Melbourne … and starting to regret that!

We are busy!

There is a lot going on and we are talking to lots of clients.  The portfolios are holding up pretty well and that little jump at the start of the week certainly helped.

End of quarter is a busy time for the Investment Committee and there has been a lot going on in the models, which Troy Theobald and his team will provide a detailed update on next week. 

Additionally, and thankyou, a lot of you are having your friends and colleagues contact us.  You must be talking us up (and Lauren has been posting lots of the client testimonials on social media) and this sort of environment is probably ideal for a business like ours.

  • It does help that we have added resources to the advice team in the last six months but having personal access to an adviser who knows you and your position and is pro-actively considering alternatives for you is pretty handy at the moment.
  • We are also pretty nimble and the speed with which we can make changes is so much better than our experience in 2007 and 2008 during the GFC.
  • The other advantage is that we share many of our clients with quality accountants and this will help our small business clients make the most of the government stimulus packages albeit sometimes just to survive this shutdown.

If you have someone you think should talk to us then please send them our way.  As we said last week, a lot of wealth is built in the market when the situation goes from ‘bad’ to ‘not so bad’.  We are still in the bad and we are not saying this will change next week or even the one after, but we would be very surprised, if markets were not a lot more expensive this time next year and there is an opportunity to set yourself up for this rise now.

Another week closer to a vaccine – have a great, somewhat restricted but healthy, weekend.