Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of April 28, 2020

Article Excerpt

For somebody who advises against investing on the basis of predictions, I get a lot of questions from portfolio-management clients and long-time readers about what I expect the market to do. I’m happy to answer as well as I can. But you need to understand that my answers are opinions, not predictions. I know I will get it wrong from time to time. You should keep that in mind as well. When trying to figure out the market, I stay alert for signs that opinion has become heavily one-sided, out of proportion to known facts. This one-sidedness appears more often on the negative side of the opinions/predictions spectrum. In mid-March, for example, many people in and out of the media were going to extremes in expecting or predicting terrible things from the coronavirus, unless drastic measures were taken. The only prominent person advocating anything like a wait-and-see approach was Donald Trump. In fact, the chance to differ with/condemn Trump’s view may have pushed…