You may not have thought about pi since your high school geometry class, but it is a magic number. It starts with 3.1415926535 and goes on from there forever.
Pi was also the main character in the book (and movie) “Life of Pi,” a fictional tale of a young boy who survived 227 days on a small boat with a Bengal tiger as his companion.
The next time you encounter Pi, the results will likely be much less precise than pi and the experience may not be as positive as Pi’s.
Pi comes after Omicron in the Greek alphabet and will likely be the name of our yet-to-be-identified next COVID variant – unless, of course, there are nuanced reasons to skip right to Rho. As we learned with Omicron, by the time we identify a new variant it has likely already initiated an unstoppable global spread.
While I firmly believe we would all be better off without any additional variations of COVID, that is not a realistic baseline expectation for our future. COVID will be a risk to our personal health and economic outcomes for the foreseeable future.
There is even a risk that the eventually-to-be discovered Pi COVID variant combines the contagious qualities of Omicron with the severity of Delta. That combination would have the entire world spinning in circles as the number of victims would quickly overwhelm our already strained global medical resources.
The wild card for this ugly scenario is whether our bodies have developed effective strategies for battling the disease – whether through vaccination or previous infection – and how long our defenses will remember that strategy.
While traders are currently busy creating market volatility by trying to predict what the Federal Reserve will do with interest rates over the next few months, collectively we are just one wicked Pi away from going full circle back to 0% interest rates.
There is always an abundance of worst-case scenarios for us to worry about, and occasionally they come to fruition. However, throughout history we see that even the worst-case scenarios can be successfully resolved if given enough time.
Our disciplined investment process is specifically intended to match your level of investment and inflation risk with your personal short- and long-term goals. This Portfolio SegmentationTM approach gives our clients long-term confidence when short-term traders are consumed with fear or greed.
Both fear and greed appeared in January as we experienced more market volatility than any single month through all of 2021. We would not be surprised if this trend continues through 2022 given the wide variability of COVID, economic, and political outcomes. Instead of flailing with traders through their abundant anxieties about Pi, interest rates, or other distractions, be prepared and confident by using our Portfolio SegmentationTM process.
Quote of the week: Ben Bernanke: “Don’t try to time the market. It’s very, very difficult to do. There may be a couple of people in the world who can do it, but if there are they’re not telling you.”
