Video Transcript:

Hello everyone. Brent Chavez, Aequitas Equitas Investment Group. It’s hard to believe, but the sun is actually shining outside my office. 

We have had a really rough stretch in the markets and life in general here, but wanted to touch base with you and let you know we’re going to get through this, we’re going to be fine. 

I wore my “fight for every inch” shirt, and that’s what we’re doing here. We’re extremely busy going through data, listening to really smart people about the situation, trying to make the very best decisions, moving forward. But I can promise you, we’re not going to live in fear with managing your portfolio’s, we’re going to look for opportunities.

This whole drawdown, this whole bear market we’re facing, I firmly believe is way overdone. As I stated back in January, I thought that things were set up for some ugliness… but now we are really in an area that we should not be with what’s going on. What do I mean? Goldman Sachs came out with their GDP numbers for the rest of the year. What is GDP? That is gross domestic production. How much does our country produce? They are saying we will probably see a 5% hit to our gross domestic production. It’s a pretty big number. Say they’re wrong and it’s double that… that would be about $500 billion in lost GDP.

Well, let’s compare to what the market has done since those highs in February. The market has lost 11.5 trillion dollars in market capitalization. To help you kind of put that number in perspective, that is about half of what our total government debt is of $22.5 to 23 trillion. We could have paid off half of that debt in the last month with the losses that the market has sustained. So again, I think it’s way overdone to the downside, but it is what it is at this point. But we’re not going to live in fear. We’re not going to get paralyzed. We’re gonna be sitting at my desk, looking for opportunities to make money.

All of us are positioned very well in our portfolios concerning cash and the amount of cash is sitting there to be used. I think, potentially, we’re looking at opportunities that could be very similar to the opportunities that were going on in ‘07 and ‘08 where they were buying opportunities where people were able to double and triple their money, moving forward. I think we’re at that point. Again, I don’t know for sure anything tomorrow and in this last month it has made it very clear to think that you know anything, as far as what the markets are going to do, is a fool’s game. But, we still have to take the data, we still have to be realistic about what’s going on. And again, I think we’re overblowing this in many ways.

For example, I was speaking with a friend of mine who is in Taiwan. He lives in a little apartment he drives a moped around the city of Taipei. This is a country of about 28 million people. They haven’t stopped anything – no closed schools, they haven’t closed any health clubs, they haven’t closed any movie theaters… they’re functioning like they always have. They are wearing masks, they are getting their temperature taken and their hands sanitized when they go into a public building.

What’s the result of that? As of today, March 18th, they have about 100 confirmed cases. 100! That’s nothing! 28 million people have 100 confirmed cases – and basically off the coast of the epicenter of where this started in China. 

So I think we’re all taking very drastic steps in our lives. I know I am trying to stay away from contact with people. I think most of you are doing that. We’re seeing unprecedented measures by the government. We’re seeing unprecedented support by the federal government, central banks that are really going to try to ease this downturn we’re having, this lost GDP. So I really think that people have over panicked. They have really made some big mistakes in selling and getting out of these markets at these levels. 

Today, I think we saw something good – a very ugly red day, but we also saw red in treasuries. The treasuries are down pretty big, which is really a sign of tremendous panic. But, basically today everybody was fleeing to cash… that’s all they want, cash. Very similar to the episode we saw in 2007 and 2008. And again, generally speaking, that can be a sign that we’re getting close to some form of bottom here when that type of action is taking place. We’ve been way oversold for weeks now. It is at the point where it’s never been seen before… the overselling. 

So again, I just want to let you know, we’re “fighting for every inch,” like my t-shirt says today, to make sure we do the possible best job for all of you. We appreciate you as clients. again, on a more important note. Stay safe, don’t take any risk. If you need anything, if you need help getting groceries, if you need help getting your prescriptions, if you need help with anything, please reach out to me at the office or call me on my cell phone. I’ll make sure I do the best I can to help you. Again, we’re here for you. If you need anything, give us a call and we’ll be touching base with all of you very soon. Bye bye.