The Lowry Letter®

Remember last week’s letter, when we predicted that the Friday jobs report would be bad? Well, it wasn’t. As Brad McMillan shares, it wasn’t a bad thing to be wrong about. He surmises that companies are paying workers even when in required quarantine, for fear of losing them. Also, stronger gains were seen in service sectors than in good-producers.

Welcome to February - we’re keeping it short and sweet this week!

This week sees more market turbulence. For some perspective on the current situation, Brad McMillan has recent posts that provide clarity.

We often say that your personal economy is even more important than the real economy. In other words, your needs should define your investment proposal, rather than them being designed by external factors. This continues to be true during market corrections and other periods of uncertainty.

Each residential U.S. address can order 4 at-home Covid tests from this address: https://special.usps.com/testkits

Many areas of the United States are seeing potential peaks in the Omicron wave. It seems like everyone you know has either tested positive or has someone in their household who has. Two years into the pandemic, we are more likely to catch Covid though less likely to get very sick (if vaccinated). Testing continues to be a useful tool, and something that should have been easier to do, at home, from the beginning.

This seems to be the week when everyone got Covid-19 (or when everyone you know did). Local schools continue to deal with many absences (student AND teacher) and most people are trying to figure out what the right quarantine protocol is. As we wrote about last week, we will see if the United States follows similar patterns of quickly declining cases seen in other countries.

In the meantime, we do our best to manage. We think this op-ed by philosopher Agnes Callard is worth your time: Covid makes us want to see the future. Too bad we’re not good at it. 

Happy New Year!

2022 is certainly starting out in an interesting way, with the omicron variant causing significant upheaval for many people. It’s not all bad news, as our first item explains.

We will be open but working remotely on Dec 23^rd and December 31^st. We will be answering the phone and emails as needed. Our office will be closed on December 24^th, as will the markets, in observance of the Christmas holiday.

We hope that you have a wonderful Christmas and thought you might enjoy this 2018 oldie from the Joe’s (and Chris).

It is hard to believe that only 2 weeks remain until 2022. We hope you are anticipating a positive end to your year.

Time is almost up for any tax-related actions, so please get in touch if there is anything on your mind. We are glad that we don’t have to divide the year into 2 different tax code periods.

The November Market recap is live and available here. Commonwealth’s Sam Millette has some other economic data releases showing a fairly typical mix of data.

Don’t forget about our webinar, 10 Estate Planning Mistakes to Avoid, taking place tomorrow, December 9^th, at 5pm ET.