Written by: Samira Fatehyar
Synopsis
Listen to the podcast here.
The Election. That’s been the biggest story these days. On Saturday, November 7th, the race was called and showed that Joe Biden will become the next President of the United States. President Trump has not accepted the results, nor do I foresee him doing so. Many of his supporters have called out election fraud. I can say that living in Nevada, that there have been several friends of mine that have told me that their votes did not count. Meaning that when they went on the website to track their votes, it was not counted. Does this indicate widespread election fraud? Or is it just because all the votes have not been counted yet? I don’t know. I’d hope that our election process is fair and that the people’s voices have been heard in the choosing of our next president. I believe the process to be fair, so I’m hoping that this discrepancy is due to the vote tally not being completed yet.
But one thing that cannot be understated is the massive division we are facing today in the United States. We cannot forget that over 70 million people voted for President Trump while another 74 million voted for Joe Biden. It's been an interesting experience for me. I’ve had many friends on both sides “coming out” to me as voting for one candidate over the other, afraid of consequences for doing so. And though some of these friends I disagree with politically, they are and will remain my friends. This division is not healthy. But the change starts at the individual level. I ask everyone who has a friend or family member on the so-called “other side” to reach out to them and see how they are doing. Refrain from having a political conversation and instead have a friend to friend or family member to family member conversation. I can guarantee you that there is more that unites us than divides us. Once we see that, we’ll be able to move forward to a path of greatness that lies ahead for this country. But until then, the fighting and bickering will continue.
Now, this blog post will be shorter than previous ones. I, like everyone else, have been glued to my tv and trying to figure out what will happen next. Due to this, I picked a few economic updates I thought were important to bring to everyone’s attention. I also sat down and talked with Dr. Clemens Kownatzki about the election and its effect on the markets moving forward.
Economic Update
GDP
The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) came out with 3rd Quarter GDP numbers on October 29th. In their report, they revised the annualized GDP numbers we experienced in the second quarter to a negative 31.4%. They also estimated that 3rd Quarter preliminary GDP number was positive 33.1%.
Graph 1
Real GDP: Percent change from preceding quarter
https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-10/gdp3q20_adv.pdf
This means that we’ve gained more than we lost right? No, this is an incorrect statement because as we know in math rates of change cannot be looked at linearly.
See, if you start with $100 and lose 31.4% of it as we saw what happened in the 2nd quarter, we are left with $68.60. Now, moving forward we have to continue on with $68.60 and if we see a gain of 33.1%, the estimate of the GDP growth in the 3rd quarter, then we get $91.31. So, we haven’t broke even yet. This tells us that the GDP numbers we saw in the 3rd quarter are great, we have improved, but we are still below pre-covid numbers and this needs to be emphasized heavily. Our economic fundamentals remain depressed.
So, what increased our GDP numbers from the 2nd quarter to the 3rd? Among many things it was Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE). According to the report:
The increase in PCE reflected increases in services (led by health care as well as food services and accommodations) and goods (led by motor vehicles and parts as well as clothing and footwear). The increase in private inventory investment primarily reflected an increase in retail trade (led by motor vehicle dealers). The increase in exports primarily reflected an increase in goods (led by automotive vehicles, engines, and parts as well as capital goods). The increase in nonresidential fixed investment primarily reflected an increase in equipment (led by transportation equipment). The increase in residential fixed investment primarily reflected an increase in brokers’ commissions and other ownership transfer costs.
The biggest pattern in PCE is motor vehicles, which I find very interesting since there has been a big spike in used car sales as well. But, for motor vehicle dealers to be having an increase in sales, seems to be a good thing, at least for now. Another interesting increase was that of brokers’ commissions and other ownership transfer costs which increased residential fixed investment. This was due to the high volume of sales that the residential real estate sector has been experiencing for a few months now. Though, I still do foresee a slow down in that sector coming soon.
Overall, I think the GDP numbers looked good, but we are still not in the pre-Covid levels yet, which means we are still in a recession and I really hope people remember that. Until we get control over Covid-19, our economic fundamentals will remain weak, regardless of what Wall Street decides to do.
Unemployment
On November 6th, the BLS came out with an updated look at the unemployment rate in the US. In it, we saw that employment increased by 638,000 jobs and the official unemployment rate decreased to 6.9%. This is great news right? Well, not exactly. The fact is that the employment gains are increasing at a decreasing rate. What exactly does that mean? I’ve helped illustrate that in Graph 2, below.
Graph 2
US Employment Gains
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/non-farm-payrolls
The fact is that the US initially lost roughly 22 million jobs since the start of the pandemic back in March and April. We have since recovered 12 million of those jobs, which is a great feat, but that also means that 10 million are still unemployed.
Many people have asked me about the future of a stimulus package coming soon now that Joe Biden is the President-elect. The fact of the matter is that we still don’t know what will happen to the Senate. Sure, its leaning towards the GOP retaining control, but its not a sure thing. The runoff election for the Georgia Senate seats will be in January, so from now until then, we won’t really know how much President-elect Biden will be able to accomplish while he is in office.
Though, many have argued that President-elect Biden is in favor of a national lockdown. Though the fact checkers have proven that this is false, Biden has stated that if scientists advised him to do so he would, though he personally didn’t think it would happen. He is in favor of a mask mandate but if we were to see a lockdown again, we should be prepared to see unemployment numbers increase once again. This in addition to the already 10 million without jobs, is alarming.
If we go ahead and include the U-6 unemployment rate, we actually see that the unemployment rate is at 12.1% instead of the official 6.9%. For those of you who don’t know, I’m a big fan of the U-6 unemployment rate. See, U3 (the official unemployment rate) only takes into account those who are unemployed and have been searching for work for the past 27 weeks. Many economists, including myself, believe that the U6 unemployment rate gives a much clearer picture of the unemployment level. U6 takes into account everything in U3 including those working part time even though they have expressed the desire to find full time work, those who have gone back to school, those underemployed, those who have become disabled, and those who have become discouraged. U6 also includes those who have remained unemployed past 27 weeks.
Table 1
Alternative measures of labor underutilization
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
Though, comparatively, the U-6 unemployment rate has also been decreasing, but it still remains higher than 10%. At the height of the Great Recession, the unemployment rate was at 10.6%, so what we are experiencing is still something we haven’t experienced in recent history. Of course, it’s my hope that we continue to see decreasing unemployment rates, but the economy doesn’t run on hope unfortunately. We need to continue our diligence, look at the numbers and data, and act accordingly. That is the only way we can overcome this recession.
Connecting the Dots: The Election and the Markets
The Election and the Markets
A Conversation with Dr. Clemens Kownatzki
I sat down and talked with Dr. Clemens Kownatzki on Friday, November 6th, about the current state of the markets and how its been affected by the election. This was of course, the day before we were told that Joe Biden had won the election. Though, it was clear at the time of our discussion that it would be leaning that way. We talked with Dr. Kownatzki a couple months back when we discussed 9/11 and how it was similar to the Covid Crisis.
In case you forgot, Dr. Clemens Kownatzki has been an executive in the financial services industry for well over two decades. His experience ranges from management positions in brokerage and treasury operations to advising corporate as well as retail clients with a focus on managing their risk effectively. He has also been an active investor in options and derivatives markets. Having lived and worked in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the U.S., his investments range from equity to international capital and currency markets. Dr. Kownatzki’s primary research interest focuses on the important question of how risk and market volatility affects investment returns. He is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the Pepperdine Graziadio Business School and has recently been promoted to Department Chair of Accounting, Finance, and Real Estate. To listen to the interview, please check out the podcast. The following is a transcript of our conversation.
Samira: Thank you so much Dr. Clemens for coming back on the show. I know it's been especially crazy few days for us all!
Dr. Clemens: Yes indeed, crazy is probably an understatement. Thanks for having me!
Samira: Of course! So it's becoming clearer and clearer that Biden may become the next president of the United States. And while there still remains a good chance, the Senate will be held by the GOP, what does this mean for markets in general, and should we expect to see antitrust legislation passed, or a fiscal stimulus passed?
Dr. Clemens: Alright, so the short answer, given the likelihood that the Senate will be GOP controlled, probably not. You also have to remember that both Biden and Harris are probably the most politically centric of the Democratic previous candidates. If it was a ticket of Sanders and Warren, I would probably be worried if I was in the camp of Google, Facebook and so forth, but it looks like the reaction politically will be probably mute. So I expect a relatively non-confrontational set of hearings that will probably showcase a few of the Zuckerbergs out there. But if we face it, Washington is still controlled by these old white guys who have no idea of what technology is. Just look at the questions they ask, Zuckerberg. And that was really kind of a pathetic show of, you know, level of interest and level of understanding of what we're dealing with, so I don't expect any major breakups of these tech giants, at least not in the US. And the markets are clearly showing that too. So just look at NASDAQ. Nasdaq 100 is up about 40% year to date, which is insane given that we've had these massive returns last year. And it's on track for another stellar year, right? Probably making an attempt to retake the previous highs in September. You can also extrapolate the same for the general market. I think it's a continuation of the trend that started a decade ago. Yeah, the ticket was close your eyes by tech and you hope for the best. Evaluations are extremely high. So you know, close your eyes, and even if it makes you sick buy tech, you know buy the large mega cap company. I think, broadly speaking, investors are probably served well, at least in the medium term to do that. Stay away from retail, leisure, travel, hotels, any of that sort of business that has a physical nature to it where people interact physically and anything that can be done remotely like we do now and Zoom and other platforms they'll be able to manage better on a relative basis and and given that Covid numbers are increasing again, not just in the US, but worldwide it. You know it just, you know, speaks to that underlying narrative. So, I think it's pretty much of more of the same that we've seen.
Samira: Yeah, that'll be interesting, and I know I've been getting a lot of questions from everyone about the volatility we're seeing in the markets. So why are we seeing so much volatility? And should we be framing volatility differently in our minds?
Dr. Clemens: OK, so volatility is a a strange kind of conundrum in a way. Conundrum might not be the right word, but it is somewhat of a quantitative conundrum. So if I may put up my professor head for just a minute here. So when we associate risk with volatility, so we typically say this is the annualized standard deviation of returns. Right, so we look at the returns, look how they deviate from the mean, and that is what we consider volatility or risk. So, if you take volatility of say 20%, that means we expect prices to go up or down by 20% within a years time. And that's always based on the normal distribution assumption, right. So markets are normally distributed and you know that's the assumption we make and then we are 68% sure that we can expect that 20% up or down movement, right? So that's another thing that people don't understand. Our confidence in that 20% level is actually quite low. So another interesting concept about volatility is not clear that a lot of people looking at the VIX, but VIX is not really risk, and it's also not based on standard deviation at all, right? It has nothing to do with standard deviation, it used to be backed out from options on the S&P 500 using the Black Scholes or some form of Black Scholes model. But today the VIX is really based on a variance swap and and so in essence is the forward looking measure. It tells us what do we expect volatility to be 22 days from now or 30 calendar days from now. So it's a very different measure than standard deviation which is looking backwards. The VIX is looking forward, and so what you've seen in the VIX levels just increasing before the election is just a level of uncertainty going forward that's priced into the market, and the best way to explain it is people are uncertain about the future, and so they buy put options primarily and that drives up the level of the VIX. Just before the election, the VIX actually turned down, and the other interesting fact is that if you compare standard deviation with the VIX or what we consider the risk standard deviation is actually a symmetric measure. That means it measures the movements on the upside just as well as the movements on the downside, but risk or fear that we perceive is really for the downside, because the natural position of an investor is long the market, it's not short the market. But you know, we have this kind of dichotomy between what we think risk is and how we measure it. And the VIX is a prime example for that and and based on my research, the VIX is actually not doing such a great forecast in terms of what real expectations are and what the reality of the future volatility is. And it's even more less of a good measure when we look at returns, right. So the VIX level today tells us nothing about the returns 30 days out. So you know, it's a very misunderstood measure, but in general it's a good measure of expected fear.
Samira: OK, yeah that gives people a good way to look at it then. I guess we look at the VIX and we’re like okay, that's the volatility. And really in essence, it's not. So thank you for clearing that up. So how does all the highs we're experiencing in the short term translate into expectations for the long term? And do you foresee our economic fundamentals improving drastically soon?
Dr. Clemens: Well, drastically soon, probably not. We just looked at the jobs numbers this morning and so the jobs report was actually better than expected. You know, we added 638,000 jobs in October, which is better than the expectation of just about 600,000. So there is an improvement in the labor market. The pace of the improvement, though, is slowing down, and given that we have higher rates of Covid, higher infections, higher hospitalizations, we're going to see more lockdown measures coming, and that really isn't good for the job market. All in all, we've lost 22 million jobs in March and April and we added only 12 million as of today, so we are still short 10 million jobs, right? And that's the official measure, right? So there's a lot of people that are not really falling into that metric because we don't measure them. So I also observed a few major forces in the last decade or so. And let me preface this by saying that I have really great respect for a lot of the economists at the Fed and the Treasury. In fact, one of my biggest mentors, Professor Tom Willett was the Director of Research at the Fed for many years. I did my PhD work at Claremont under him and under John Rutledge as well. And I think there's a lot of really good and brilliant economists that work for these institutions. But I think at some time they need to step away from the econometric models and just go outside and walk the streets, if you will, you know. And see what's actually going on in the country. And my biggest issue is that they have this playbook where they say ok, here's a crisis. We have this massive tool of printing money. Let's do it again and again and again. So we've levered ourselves out of the last crisis and all we seem to be able to do the same thing over again. You know throw more money at the problem. But that's not really the right solution, it's really how you do it. Just to quote one example, I was talking with some friends of mine in Germany and so the German government, like many other European countries, now have another lock down for a month. So the German government did a, what I think is a neat little measure, they said ok, if you are a small company and you have 50 or less employees we’ll pay you. The government will pay you 75% of last year's revenue in November. And you know, I think that's a great measure because it supports really small businesses and this is not about applications, you know, PPP loans and all the hoopla and all the red tape that was going on. It's just like, ok, what did you do last year in November? We’ll pay you 75%, which I think is a fair amount of money given the situation that we're in. And then the other thing here and this is probably a broader question about inflation and how we measure prices and the level of goods in the economy. Yes, we do look at substitution effects here, so if the price of apples goes up, you know we can substitute maybe for oranges or some other fruit, you know. So there's that here, but what is not really measured is how inflation and prices or cost of things effects different people at a different level of their income or the wealth level. So if you're an average worker and you've seen a very modest increase in the last 30 years of your wages, compare that to the cost of education. I'm a professor here, so I know how much the students are paying. Cost of insurance, cost of housing and all of these went up multiples more than wages. And I did just recently an interesting study to look at the affordability of things and we always talk about the affordability of house prices. But if you look at the affordability of stocks, you know measured by the S&P. So in 2009 it took about four hours of work to buy one share of SPY. Today, it takes about 12 hours of work to buy one share of SPY. For an average salaried worker, right, that's a huge increase, right? And and so stocks have become unaffordable for many parts of our society and that means you know it adds to that K shaped sort of trend that we've seen. And I think yes, we have an economic recovery out there and it's been gradual, you know but steady, great! Stock market, fantastic improvement, but not everybody has really participated in that because it's become more and more unaffordable. And so I think that K shaped recovery will continue and what companies realized through this pandemic is that you know what? We can manage just ok and we just laid off 30% of our staff, so productivity has increased. Profits, you know they may be under pressure, but you know in terms of profit per employee, it's actually gone up, and so I can see with increasing use of technology a lot of the jobs will be either replaced by a machine or by an algorithm. And so that doesn't bode well for the overall economy, even though on aggregate we measure it, you know, looking at an increase, but you know, not everybody can participate in that hopefully a continued economic boom. But one last thing I wanted to add, you know it sounds like I'm I'm a socialist. I'm not at all I'm really a free market participant and I like free markets, but what we've done in the last crisis is really, we've socialized Wall Street because we bailed out all these big companies, specifically banks and institutions and the brunt of it has been paid for by the people, right? This year again, we've socialized Wall Street right. It wasn't the banks this time it was some of the other big name companies and the brunt of the free market forces are really upon us and that to me is almost a weird and strange new form of socialism. Yeah, so I believe companies take too much risk and they go under, you know what? Let them go under. You know they've levered themselves in the last few years specifically so much that they need to be punished. And if there's no punishment for the crime, the financial crime that you're doing, then you know everybody it's a free for all right and but at the end, somebody has to pay for it.
Samira: I agree and and moral hazard is just through the roof. And I agree with that. You know, if we're going to bail out companies, why can't we bail out the people? So to a certain extent, I really like what Germany is doing. Like what you said give me 75% of the profit that they made last year in November, giving it to them this year. It's subsidizing them in a way that they can help their own people, and I like it like that. And then I also wanted to ask you if you had any comments about the Fed's statement yesterday. I mean, I think we all expected them to to remain, you know, near 0 interest rates, but I just wanted to get your take on that.
Dr. Clemens: You know, I honestly haven't thought much about it because I've been so much, like I said in our conversation earlier, I've been sold enthralled with the the election results and not sleeping that a lot of the stuff that really got lost in this election bubble are the economic fundamentals right? They're not looking as good as we would like them to be, right? And the Covid numbers themselves have gone up as well, right? So while everybody's eyes, including myself has focused on elections, when are we going to find these results and what not? I've really kind, I’ve not even looked at the Fed speech yesterday. Powell is a, you know, I respect him a lot. I think he does a lot of good things. I'm not really agreeing with all the money that's been thrown at the problem, but you know they're all trying their best, so I don't have any great thoughts about the Fed statement other than the fact that the fundamentals aren't looking good. The economic fundamentals are still difficult and the markets show us a different picture.
Samira: Right, yeah, and everyone's just telling me like what are you talking about? Like the economy is great, the stock market is up and I'm like, ok, well that doesn't equate. You know, they're not the same thing, so I'm glad that you also pointed that out too. So now, for people with the traditional 60/40 stock to bond allocated portfolios, should they reconsider their strategy given the current state of the market?
Dr. Clemens: Short answer, yes. But as any economist would say, it depends, right? So where and how do we invest differently? You know, if you say 60/40 is no longer a good thing? So again, let me put a little bit of a frame of reference here. Traditional 60/40 allocation actually isn't always great and there have been actually a few episodes of what we call a loss decade, right? So the last time that happened was just the end of the 90s until 09. That was a lost decade in terms of the return of that 60/40 allocation before that 1974 until 1985 lost decade and then a slightly shorter period in the 60s until the early 70s I think. And then yet another good reference point is Schiller Cape ratio, that's the cyclically adjusted PE ratio that looks at a 10 year moving average of the PE ratios of the S&P. Which is about 30 with just over 31 right now, which is higher than the peak before the last bubble. But it's not as high as the late 90s, the tech bubble, so that in the late 90s I think it was 44-ish at that level, at the high point. So in theory we could still go plenty higher in terms of the SNP, you know. But, with a typical allocation of the S&P, I think we need to look at, is it really wise to have that high allocation into traditional equity matching the S&P? And then also, we've talked about this before a huge part of the movement in the S&P is really governed by just a handful of stocks, you know. Again, the mega cap stocks make up so much of the S&P. weight. That you know it's really no longer good a diversified portfolio because it has this huge concentration risk towards just a few tech companies and mega cap stocks. And then looking at the bond allocation in that 60/40 portfolio, we've had four decades of long-term interest rates. Right, so the Fed basically guarantees another 2-3 years of extremely low interest rates. But you know, if I have 40% of my Portfolio in an asset that is supposed to be fixed income but provides no cash flow, I have a problem. Right so I'm, again as a traditional investor, I'm forced into something else with higher yields, but that comes at greater risk, right? So even though they may say ok, I'm investing in high yield and I have a fixed income, but that high yield actually is not as safe, you know it's not Treasuries. And that creates another risk level that you know traditional bond investor doesn't want and doesn't need and shouldn't have, right? I mean if you are retired you shouldn't have that massive up and down movement in your portfolio. So what does that mean? Alternatives high yielding stocks perhaps, but stocks haven't yielded that high recently and and growth has outpaced value for the past decade. So you're also stuck and some people say you know, maybe it's time that value will outpace growth in the next decade, perhaps so. But overall you just have to be more discriminating, more strategic about the investment. And then is real estate the answer? Perhaps. Yeah, they have their clear some opportunities there in in some REITs. Perhaps some tech based REITs like Prologis or Cell Tower type REITs you know? Again, based on technology rather than some physical asset alone, perhaps healthcare? I mean you know better than I do what good REIT allocations are, but perhaps a little bit more moving towards some REIT allocations that have that yield and have that cash flow. There are some alternatives for sophisticated investors, but that's really typically out of the reach of a traditional retail investor. And then what's left is maybe gold, silver. Cryptos, I don't know, you know, there's clearly that attractive notion of an asset that moves and you know it's looking attractive and nice. But I'd be careful because these are not traditional financial investments and they move like commodities. That means you can easily see 5-10% movement up or down in a day, and that's not what a traditional investor wants in their portfolio. But perhaps one area that I'm looking at is greater international allocation, specifically towards China. And if we make the assumption that Biden will win this presidency, we can expect a less confrontational tone towards China. That means China can, actually, you know perhaps bang on the notion that trade with the US will you know reaccelerate, but also China itself is looking towards themselves a little bit more inward because they've learned some lessons from Covid and how they've actually managed that situation pretty well. So they've actually been up and running before everybody else and and so their economy is looking a lot better. And I think they're also realizing that if we take the notion of a slightly less physical nature of our society, where it's a little bit more virtual and a little bit more tech based. It's also less polluting and it's less interacting with people. Again, I think they have clear ideas of being, you know, a bit more conscious about the environment. I don't know if that's just, you know telling us this is what they're doing and they will do something else, but I think that there's clearly a drive towards cleaner technology in China and towards sort of more of a tech based virtual lifestyle. I mean, I was in China last year and I was, you know, walking around, trying to get food from one of those small food stands outside the hotel and they looked at me like I'm from another planet when I wanted to give them cash they said, you know what? We don't want cash we want Alipay or WeChat pay you know, don't you have that on your phone? I mean, they're talking to me in Chinese. I understand the gesture of saying you know like, we don't like cash, it’s clumsy and it's inefficient. Can you just pay me with Alipay? And you know, it's one of these lessons that I've learned. You know, there are actually in many ways far ahead of us. Certainly infrastructure wise and and some of the tech applications that they do. So I think looking a little bit more towards the East or into more international and less US centric might be a good way forward for the next decade I think. And yeah, I think within the next decade China will outpace the US in terms of GDP.
Samira: I agree with that. I also think that our policies of, you know, trying to stop trade with certain countries have only made them more independent and thrive better without us. So I think we're actually shooting ourselves in the foot, if we, you know, go ahead with those policies. Under a Biden administration, I would expect the opposite and to have more trade but if somehow you know Trump wins, then you know we have another four years of catastrophic trade policies, which worries me. So I would definitely agree in the sense that more investors should look elsewhere for returns. So I don't know, we'll see what happens, but do you have any general advice you'd like to leave our listeners with?
Dr. Clemens: Yeah, I mean just one general advice, because we're talking so much about politics these days. You know that very well as an economist, politics is not the same as policy, and I think specifically in the last few years that discussion about policy has really turned into a discussion about politics. And I think we should go back to, you know, serious policy discussions. And the debates, the little I've seen this year was nothing about policy. I mean had no idea as to what candidates would do in terms of policy because that's really what's important. But it's really turned into a Muppet show almost of political— it's like a theater, you know. It has nothing to do with policy and I think we need to go back to policy discussions and yes, I mean there's so many different ways of how you can do policy and you can disagree with policies, but as long as it's rational. And as long as it's you know, at a level that is not at a, you know a teenage level or 4 year old level just bickering. I think we can make some progress and I have great hope for this country that will get back to actual policy discussions and not just politics.
Samira: No, I agree. I hope that too. I mean just the coronavirus that became a really politicized policy. You know, it was like it has nothing to do with, you know, if you're Republican or Democrat. It's all about the science and the health. So it's sad to see that that's how far we came, but I'd like to thank you again for coming on and I definitely enjoyed this conversation and we’ll definitely have you back on again.
Dr. Clemens: Sounds good, likewise, take care!
Samira: You too.
Concluding Remarks
There is still a long road to recovery, economically speaking. This is something I will not let people lose sight of. As long as our economic fundamentals remain depressed, we will most likely not see a recovery anytime soon. So what can you do to help speed up the road to economic recovery? That comes down to listening to local officials and scientists about the pandemic in your local communities. Wear a mask. Remain socially distant. Believe me, this is hard since we are social beings, but it’s a sacrifice we all have to make for the greater good. If we think more collectively than individualistically, we might be able to overcome this faster.
One last reminder: please be kind to one another. We are all suffering in our own ways right now. The more unified we are against this invisible enemy, the greater chance we have had returning back to a sense of normalcy. If you enjoy listening to our podcast and reading our blog, please consider donating to our efforts at our Buzzsprout page. Please continue to stay safe and healthy. I’ll write to you all again in 2 weeks.