Know The Day Will Come – 17.04.20

HarperLees Update: Know The Day Will Come

We hope you enjoyed the sunny Easter Weekend, despite the continuing ‘Stay Safe at Home’ policy.

As we approach the end of week three, the government has unsurprisingly announced an extension of the safety measures for at least another three weeks.

Last week, we referred to examples of positive human behaviour and it would be remiss not to mention the following inspirational and happy stories:

Captain Tom Moore – aged 99 years old has been walking 100 laps of his garden and set out to raise £1,000 for NHS related charities. Incredibly, his Just Giving page , found here currently stands at more than £18 million!

The Grilli family have converted their home to produce protective face visors from 3-D printers. With the support of Nissan and crowdfunding via Just Giving here they are now producing 100,000 per week.

It was also heartening to hear of Connie Tichen, who is believed to be the oldest Coronavirus survivor at age 106!

Taking care of your mental health and wellbeing

Staying at home can make us feel it is more difficult to take care of our mental health and wellbeing. The charity, Mind has produced a very helpful checklist:

• Food: do you have a way to get food delivered if you need to self-isolate?
• Cleaning: do you have cleaning supplies?
• Work: can you carry on working, including working from home? If not, can you find out your rights to payment or benefits?
• Medication: do you have enough medication, or a way to get more?
• Health: can you reorganise any planned therapy or treatments?
• Connectivity: have you got ways to keep in contact with people you see regularly, like their phone numbers, email addresses? Do you need help setting up digital communication, like a video calling app?
• Routine: can you create a routine or timetable for yourself? And if you live with other people, should you create a household schedule? Do you need to agree how the household will run with everyone at home all day?
• Exercise: is there any physical activity you can do inside your home, like going up and down the stairs, using bean tins as weights, or exercises you can do in your chair?
• Nature: have you thought about how you can bring nature into your home? Can you get some seeds and planting equipment delivered, or put up photos of green spaces?
• Entertainment: have you thought about things to do, books to read or TV shows to watch?
• Relax: have you got materials so you can do something creative, such as pencils and paper?

Further information and guidance can be found here at Mind’s website

Ideas and Assistance

Continuing our suggested activities, we found the following online viewing options:

• Music here
• Online Theatre here including Phantom of the Opera this weekend.
• A virtual tour of the National Portrait Gallery here
• And Highlights of the London 2012 Olympics here

We asked our team to recommend their book choices. First up is Michele who suggested:

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll – A classic, that will transport you away from everyday life, unlock inspiration and make you laugh through the absurd conversations!!

Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris – Fiction based on a true story of love, courage and defiance from World War II.

We would welcome ideas and recommendations from our clients for future newsletters.

Markets

This week, we decided to share a market view from Square Mile, an independent research company:

Have markets got ahead of themselves?

We find ourselves in the midst of a striking rally in the S&P 500 which has retraced 27% since the market lows on the 23rd of March, regaining over half the losses since its peak in February. The FTSE 100 has been more pedestrian in comparison being only up 13% from its lowest point. The US government has been busy pulling together packages to help prop up businesses. Congress has released $2 trillion to help individuals and businesses directly affected by the virus and the Fed more recently has created a $2.2 trillion bundle of loans and liquidity support to help markets and businesses through these difficult times.

We are now entering the first quarter earnings season, but most investors will be expecting widespread bad news which will largely be ignored by the market. One development that seems to be supporting the market at the moment are signs that the epidemic is being suppressed. We are perhaps passing the worst here in Europe while the US appears to be approaching the peak of this outbreak. However, on a less optimistic note, what is of greater concern is the prospect of several months of stringent controls over population movement and that life will not return to normal for some time. Populations globally still remain very vulnerable to another wave of an outbreak of the virus and this is something that the authorities will continue to monitor very closely.

In our view, the catalyst for markets to have a more sustained rally from current levels is positive news on the development of therapeutic solutions to help people recover if they have been infected by this virus or, more importantly, some sort of vaccine, but that is many months away. Therefore, while markets have risen both significantly and rapidly, it is unlikely that this is anything more than a bear market rally and we can expect markets to give back some of the ground they have gained.

This supports HarperLees’ views of being cautiously optimistic for a recovery, although we are likely to see more volatility in the short term. As always, please let us know if you would like to discuss your own situation.

Contacts and Advice

We remain available, and please feel free to contact us for any assistance whether advice-related or simply for a general catch up.

Our planned Coronavirus related advice section on our website should be live over the next week or so. In the meantime, we would be pleased to provide guidance for the available support to employees or those who run businesses affected by the current situation. Please feel free to extend this offer to family and friends.

Stay safe and we look forward to catching up soon.