The primary mission of this podcast is to bring to your attention the unexpected events, that may affect your investments.
After all, it's those “out of the blue” occurrences that often have the largest impact on the financial markets. These are the so-called “Black Swans.” And it's a critical element in your financial management.
Back on January 25th, 2019 we alerted you to a new disease that was just then disrupting the Chinese City of Wuhan. Back then it was called by the more generic name of the “Novel” Corona Virus, or 2019 nCov. Only latter would scientists call it the Covid 19 Virus.
Today I need to call your attention to another outside event, that has the potential to have a far-reaching impact, primarily on our political system, but potentially on the financial markets. The event is the 2020 Elections.
Now I know that it's easy to dismiss this as old news, settled business, something that's over already. But is it? Apparently, not everyone thinks so.
Over the past week, we've had two major hearings in Pennsylvania last week and yesterday in Arizona. By their respective State Legislatures looking into the possibility of voter fraud in those two states.
Additionally we've had numerous lawsuits filed alleging again various forms of election malfeasance. Yes, some of these lawsuits have been thrown out, but others continue on.
And yes, some of these lawsuits have been filed by the Trump campaign, but not all. Apparently, there are individual citizens who are alleging that their civil rights have been infringed upon, and are seeking redress under the Equal Protection Clause.
And finally, there are allegations that certain of the vote process systems, may have intentionally distorted the tally results. They accomplished it is surmised through a series of back doors in the system software.
So, in summary, there is a lot of heat being generated from this side of the election equation. These people are serious, and they believe that their cases have merit.
These are not frivolous people.
And within our legal system, all it takes is one ruling by a major court, like the Supreme Court, to completely topple all of our current thinking.
Remember it was just 20 years ago, that another hotly contested election was settled in just the forum. As the Supreme Court decided in President Bush's favor and the extended contest between Bush v. Gore was settled in an instance.
Going into that court case, the country was fairly evenly divided, with supporters on both sides of the issue. And I don't know of anyone who was completely confident of its outcome.
Today, most of the country, I suspect, feels that the election is over, and Joe Biden was chosen.
But I remind you, that anything can happen in a courtroom. And when we feel the most certain by a future verdict, is often when we find ourselves on the wrong side.
For investors, that's not a position that we want to be in.
So if I were to offer a piece of advice, we should all prepare for a Biden Administration to begin on January 20th.
But we should also be ready if the wind turns direction, and instead out of the blue, President Trump begins his second term on that self-same day.