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Investing In A Pandemic World

Published

5 years ago

6 minute read

Launching an investment column in the midst of the biggest economic meltdown in investment history is a peculiar thing to do, and yet, here we are. Actually, the timing may be excellent: given the parameters and objectives of this column – how not to invest, as much as how to invest – what better time to wade in? If you’re a seasoned investor, the past few months most likely have you huddled in the basement under the stairs, sucking your thumb and rocking back and forth. The market has been pounded, and justifiably so – the strategy of governments to contain COVID-19 involves essentially shutting down large sectors of the economy. One can easily surmise that industries like tourism, air travel, etc. will be in big trouble; the problem is determining how far the rot goes – if an airline fails, or many of them, what industries does it take down with it? In a highly interconnected world, the answers are not clear.

Rather than panic and throw in the towel though (as some investors appear to have done), it is wise to stop hyperventilating if you can and consider the landscape without the lens of panic. First, the pounding in the stock market simply erased the extraordinary gains made in the past several years. As of writing, the S&P 500 Index ETF (exchange traded fund, which invests in a basket of stocks that mirrors the S&P 500 companies on behalf of individuals) is now back at a level of two years ago. Today’s data point might look like a disaster relative to the value of the portfolio 4 months ago, but that paper gain to the end of 2019 was a bit suspect anyway and most expected a market correction of some kind. Not quite like this one of course, but of some kind.

Second, governments around the world now have an arsenal of tools with which to stabilize economies. Or, more like they have a variety of smaller tools and one really big one: a great big freaking printing press to crank out money and shovel into the economy’s engines. There are many arguments as to why this is a bad idea in the long run, and they may all be right, but over the past few decades these strategies have become the norm. Government-led monetary tinkering, on ever-larger scales, saved the financial world in the 2008-9 Great Recession by flooding the world with bank-stabilizing money, and that success convinced those central bankers that this tool has no practical limits. The world is now so interlinked and dependent on central bankers’ policies that shouting about how they will destroy the financial world eventually is like a dog barking at a car. We need to think and act as though these policies aren’t going away. Because they’re not.

Governments, in this consumption-based world, can see the perils of allowing huge swathes of the global economy to perish. We may sneer = at a consumer-based culture, but we wet our pants when we consider the alternative. We need to learn to do things as cleanly as possible, but nowhere in the world does anyone want to see tourism grind to a halt, or people stop buying automobiles, or cosmetics, or any other mainstay of our economy.

As a result, those central banks and governments won’t let it happen. They will pump in money, and they will ease restrictions as soon as possible to get things back to work. It is a challenging time to consider putting money in the stock market (if you’re lucky enough to have some, and a job to boot), but some great companies are on sale in a huge way now. We can see, for example, that anything to do with the food/medicine/distribution systems is of critical importance. Given the fact that governments will print money to shove at anything the general population can’t live without, it is safe to assume those sectors will pull through. Same as natural gas and other industrially-critical materials – the whole climate change narrative has been stuffed in a trunk for the time being. No one wants to face next winter with a natural gas industry that’s gone out of business.

There is of course risk that the markets would continue to fall, based on the fact that there is so much uncertainty in the world with respect to demand erosion and recovery timing. But if the big blue-chip companies that provide our industrial lifelines go defunct and irreparably damage your portfolio, well, we’ll all have much bigger problems to worry about.

 

For more stories, visit Todayville Calgary

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Terry Etam is a twenty-five-year veteran of Canada’s energy business. He has worked at a number of occupations spanning the finance, accounting, communications, and trading aspects of energy, and has written for several years on his own website Public Energy Number One and the widely-read industry site the BOE Report. In 2019, his first book, The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity, was published. Mr. Etam has been called an industry thought leader and the most influential voice in the oil patch. He lives in Calgary, Alberta.

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RFK Jr. says Hep B vaccine is linked to 1,135% higher autism rate

Published on July 1, 2025

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From LifeSiteNews

By Matt Lamb

They got rid of all the older children essentially and just had younger children who were too young to be diagnosed and they stratified that, stratified the data

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found newborn babies who received the Hepatitis B vaccine had 1,135-percent higher autism rates than those who did not or received it later in life, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Tucker Carlson recently. However, the CDC practiced “trickery” in its studies on autism so as not to implicate vaccines, Kennedy said.

RFK Jr., who is the current Secretary of Health and Human Services, said the CDC buried the results by manipulating the data. Kennedy has pledged to find the causes of autism, with a particular focus on the role vaccines may play in the rise in rates in the past decades.

The Hepatitis B shot is required by nearly every state in the U.S. for children to attend school, day care, or both. The CDC recommends the jab for all babies at birth, regardless of whether their mother has Hep B, which is easily diagnosable and commonly spread through sexual activity, piercings, and tattoos.

“They kept the study secret and then they manipulated it through five different iterations to try to bury the link and we know how they did it – they got rid of all the older children essentially and just had younger children who were too young to be diagnosed and they stratified that, stratified the data,” Kennedy told Carlson for an episode of the commentator’s podcast. “And they did a lot of other tricks and all of those studies were the subject of those kind of that kind of trickery.”

But now, Kennedy said, the CDC will be conducting real and honest scientific research that follows the highest standards of evidence.

“We’re going to do real science,” Kennedy said. “We’re going to make the databases public for the first time.”

He said the CDC will be compiling records from variety of sources to allow researchers to do better studies on vaccines.

“We’re going to make this data available for independent scientists so everybody can look at it,” the HHS secretary said.

Health and Human Services also said it has put out grant requests for scientists who want to study the issue further.

Carlson asked if the answers would “differ from status quo kind of thinking.”

“I think they will,” Kennedy said. He continued on to say that people “need to stop trusting the experts.”

“We were told at the beginning of COVID ‘don’t look at any data yourself, don’t do any investigation yourself, just trust the experts,”‘ he said.

In a democracy, Kennedy said, we have the “obligation” to “do our own research.”

“That’s the way it should be done,” Kennedy said.

He also reiterated that HHS will return to “gold standard science” and publish the results so everyone can review them.

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Elon Musk slams Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ calls for new political party

Published on July 1, 2025

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From LifeSiteNews

By Robert Jones

The Tesla CEO warned that Trump’s $5 trillion plan erases DOGE’s cost-cutting gains, while threatening to unseat lawmakers who vote for it.

Elon Musk has reignited his feud with President Donald Trump by denouncing his “Big Beautiful Bill” in a string of social media posts, warning that it would add $5 trillion to the national debt.

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it,” Musk exclaimed in an X post last month.

Musk renewed his criticism Monday after weeks of public silence, shaming lawmakers who support it while vowing to unseat Republicans who vote for it.

“They’ll lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth,” he posted on X, while adding that they “should hang their heads in shame.”

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO also threatened to publish images branding those lawmakers as “liars.”

 

Trump responded on Truth Social by accusing Musk of hypocrisy. “He may get more subsidy than any human being in history,” the president wrote. “Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa… BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!”

Musk responded by saying that even subsidies to his own companies should be cut.

Before and after the 2024 presidential election, Musk spoke out about government subsidies, including ones for electric vehicles, stating that Tesla would benefit if they were eliminated.

This latest exchange marks a new escalation in the long-running and often unpredictable relationship between the two figures. Musk contributed more than $250 million to Trump’s reelection campaign and was later appointed to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which oversaw the termination of more than 120,000 federal employees.

Musk has argued that Trump’s new bill wipes out DOGE’s savings and reveals a deeper structural problem. “We live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!!” he wrote, arguing that the legislation should be knows as the “DEBT SLAVERY bill” before calling for a new political party “that actually cares about the people.”

In June, Musk deleted several inflammatory posts about the president, including one claiming that Trump was implicated in the Jeffrey Epstein files. He later acknowledged some of his comments “went too far.” Trump, in response, said the apology was “very nice.”

With the bill still under Senate review, the dispute underscores growing pressure on Trump from fiscal hardliners and tech-aligned conservatives – some of whom helped deliver his return to power. Cracks in the coalition may spell longer term problems for the Make America Great Again movement.

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