What amazing times these are...

“Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you produce weeds that choke the life from your dreams… Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem in to an opportunity for success.” -Lao Tzu

"Bear-Market... Shmear-Market..."

The near term will likely remain volatile, but I continue to believe periods like these create long-term opportunity... We must however navigate wisely.

We will look back on this period as one that provided fantastic entry points for long-term oriented investors.

If you are a value investor- you are a long-term investor. If you are a long-term investor- you accept in advance that you are making no effort whatsoever to keep up with your benchmark or peers on a short-term basis.

Reasons to consider investing today:

-Contrarian Sentiment: Buy when there is blood in the streets. While the current crisis has created mass fear and panic, it has also created opportune entry points for long-term investors.

-Cheap Stocks: Current S&P 500 valuations imply an extended period of extraordinarily- and unlikely- weak long-term earnings growth.

-Government Action: The U.S. Government- and others- is making an extraordinarily proactive effort to address current problems.

-Growth on Tap: While the economic global engines of growth (e.g. China, Brazil, India) have slowed, they are not broken.

-Parked Wealth: Nearly $4 trillion are currently sitting in money market funds.

-Historical Precedent: Equities have delivered 9% to 11% annualized returns in the more than eight decades through 2007... decades that include the Great Depression, World War 2, the Long-Term Capital Debacle, the Asian Contagion, Iraq Wars 1 and 2 and September 11Th.