"There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen," said Vladimir Lenin. Needless to say, we are experiencing the latter, as DoubleLine Capital CEO Jeffrey Gundlach — one of this year's IA25 honorees — pointed out on a recent webcast with investors.
Others agree, like Mohamed El-Erian, the chief economic advisor to Allianz who also is on the 2020 IA25 list: "For many investors, me included, the last few weeks have been like drinking not from one firehose but from three of them — the coronavirus news, the policy responses and the market technicals."
For El-Erian, job No. 1 of many financial professionals is to "distinguish signals from noise" and turn analysis into action while recognizing that "major uncertainties remain."
Fellow IA25 winner Brian Hamburger, head of MarketCounsel and chief counsel of the Hamburger Law Firm, expressed today's challenge more emotionally: "What we're facing is daunting; … the pandemic is real; it claimed the life of one of our colleagues in early April.
"He was far too young to die …," Hamburger said."I have to constantly remind myself that my job is to turn tragedy into triumph, to ensure that he remains with us and, in fact, becomes a part of who we are."
