Hey Friends,

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. It was a different kind of season this year but, at the same time, an opportunity to soberly consider our deepest blessings.

So many are impacted by the coronavirus at the present time. A third friend in my locale passed away from complications of the virus — the passing of these friends happening over recent weeks. I’m praying for you and know God is able to meet our deepest needs.

Today, I offer a brief comment on the state of the stock market. This bull market has persisted and persisted. Perhaps additional stimulus money, if approved, will carry it along further. Perhaps the notion of pent-up demand being unleashed with the arrival of a COVID vaccine will also carry it onward.

Yet, following the election with its present economic and political uncertainties and the uncertainties of the pandemic coupled with our ever-growing national debt load, the words of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan spoken in late 1996 during the dot-com bubble era seem somehow prescient now — those words being “irrational exuberance.” I don’t know whether any of you sense the same thing I’m sensing but it seems that the market is strangely unconcerned and even downright “chipper” against an economic backdrop of potential storm clouds brewing.

I suppose the argument remains that aside from the stock market, few alternatives exist that offer more than very nominal returns. If the argument indeed remains, how lofty of a market can result before the proverbial bottom falls out when a serious cost/benefit analysis says the pendulum has swung too very far?

In this market, when you invest, know your company’s business model and know its balance sheet well.

Till next time,

Paul