Equity markets can be volatile—this general rule sounds like an understatement lately as the coronavirus pandemic has emerged as a health care crisis and led to today’s financial crisis. As we continue to navigate this moment of uncertainty, it’s an important time to examine your financial position and career or business plans in addition to the investment outlook of your portfolio.

The Allegiant Private Advisors team has been regularly discussing these topics and will continue to do so as economic conditions keep evolving. More importantly, the firm has been proactive over the past few years, helping to prepare clients for an inevitable downturn and reallocating portfolios based on a conservative investment philosophy.

Markets are scary at times such as these. But only investors who accept short-term volatility earn long-term gains. Successful investors focus on the long-term and do not let volatility derail their well-laid plans—even during moments of great uncertainty.

The Allegiant team has remained disciplined investors of our clients’ capital throughout many cycles of hype and hysteria. Leading up to this bear market, we looked for opportunities to reduce risk, which positioned our client portfolios to start looking for opportunities to add risk assets when prices are down.

But this pandemic is impacting all of us. We remain concerned about our own health and the well-being of our family and friends. Locally, we’ve all practiced social distancing and have stayed home as much as possible. We are balancing our spending within our financial plans while still supporting local businesses and the economy.

That sounds like a lot to balance because it is! That’s why Allegiant regularly serves as our clients’ thinking partner through good times and bad, helping to assess minute details and big-pictures decisions affecting wealth. We embrace our role as our clients’ most trusted advisor and fiduciary steward. And, most importantly, we believe our clients feel that commitment and benefit from having a relationship with Allegiant’s expert and caring team. As opposed to the common industry practice of a single advisor working in a silo, Allegiant’s customized plans are researched, designed, analyzed and implemented by an entire integrated team.

For those retired or depending on your investments for income, hopefully your portfolio was prepared for this volatility. Perhaps you have already implemented a dynamic withdrawal strategy as we recommend. For working-class Americans, you may be applying for unemployment benefits for the first time. Individuals and small businesses are learning about how the new Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) applies to them.

Others may have an opportunity to make strategic financial decisions now. Should you employ tax-loss harvesting to help offset future gains realized in your portfolios? Are you considering Roth conversions for your IRA accounts, increasing contributions in college savings plans or refinancing your mortgage? These are all actions Allegiant is considering for clients.

As we contemplate where we go from here, the expectation is that some of the worst-case outcomes—like the risk of a recession becoming a depression—have been truncated thanks to swift monetary and fiscal responses of enormous scale. The concern is that this health-instigated crisis might still morph into a true debt crisis, a concept explored in Allegiant’s recent white paper: The Debt Albatross. We certainly hope this is not the case, but we are preparing for that possibility as well.  

We encourage you to browse the latest articles on Allegiant Private Advisors’ website as the firm’s investment managers, financial analysts and wealth advisors cover a variety of financial and investment topics on an ongoing basis. If you’d like to subscribe to future updates from Allegiant, please click here.

Now more than ever, it’s important to have an advisor who proactively communicates, educates, empowers and guides you and your financial well-being. The Allegiant team remains available if you’re ready to discuss planning, protecting and growing your wealth, as we all continue to focus on our own, our loved ones’ and our community’s health. Together we will get through this. Allegiant wants your wealth to get through this as well.

Allegiant Private Advisors is located at 240 South Pineapple Ave., Suite 200, Sarasota, FL 34236. For more information, call 941-365-3745 or visit allegiantpa.com. Advisory Services offered through Allegiant Private Advisors, LLC, a Registered Investment Adviser