The jagged peaks of the Sawtooth Mountains are monuments of endurance to Idahoans. On March 31st a magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck the heart of Idaho between the Salmon River Mountains to the north and the Sawtooth Mountains to the south. They shook but did not fall.
Unlike the rocky sentinels of the Sawtooths, on February 20th pandemic pandemonium struck investors who proceeded to torpedo the markets. Chaos rules the day, as jagged volatility shreds everything except the imaginations of headline writers.
As abrupt as an earthquake we are in a wartime economy. It’s as if air raid sirens are blaring and we’re hunkered in our basements. Warriors wear N95 respirators, polycarbonate face shields, and nitrile examination gloves. Our foe floats insidiously about as an aerosol—hosted in droplets less than 5 micrometers in diameter—eager to transverse our 6-foot invisible contamination reduction zones.
While you endure your daily battles for yourselves, your families, your communities and your businesses, what are we doing?
We are doing what we’ve done before . . . waging war in the sawtooths of bear markets. It’s largely a tactical war of patience. Let chaos run its course while identifying opportunities to strike and moments to retreat. Ninja nimbleness versus unleashing the legions. As in any war, we incur losses, lose some battles. It’s part of the price to prevail in the end.
Have we prevailed in the past?
Both of this century’s epic bears gnashed their wicked sawtooths (technically, “counter-trend rallies,” but I like “sawtooths”).