Transcript:
Tom Vaughan:
Hello, everybody, welcome to Monday. The S&P 500 was down about .1% today. And we’re just continuing this kind of sideways motion that we’ve been seeing for the last couple of weeks, which is not a bad thing for what’s happening, after this kind of big run up we’ve had for quite a while here. I think the big news today has to do with the Delta Variant, and how many businesses are starting to kind of feel some of the effects of that. So for example, these live entertainment, these big event type of companies, had their stocks kind of come down today. Some of these big events are being cancelled, and what have you. We’re starting to see some motion downward in the energy, airlines, the hotels, those type things. People are starting to cut back on their travel plans a little bit because of the rise of this Delta Variant.
And so this is something that we watch very closely. I actually spent an awful lot of time learning about the virus, just so I can try to have some idea of what impact it might have on the economy itself. But the one thing that’s happening so far, for almost all of the companies that I’ve mentioned: They don’t have a massive impact on the overall stock market, because they’re not a big piece of the overall stock market. It’s one of the advantages of buying kind of the broad index. If you buy the S&P 500, or say that Vanguard Total Stock Market Index with 3600 stocks, the overall percentages that are in airlines or in hotels or in even energy companies is relatively small. A big chunk of the money is in these other companies that tend to be able to operate fairly well, during the pandemic, at least they did last year. I think the other thing is that we’re better at operating in this environment.
There are some businesses that would have a hard time operating as things shut down, but a lot of them are still able to. Restaurants, to-go orders; those types of things, definitely gotten better at operating inside of this. But it is something to watch. It’s a piece of the puzzle for what’s happening. How does that affect people coming back out of that home back into the workforce? Are they announced today that there’s 10 million open jobs? That’s again, all time record, number of jobs? I just presented that what about a month ago, on one of my weekly summaries, it was 9.1 million jobs, so there’s an awful lot of openings right now. And so the employment picture is picking up. Does the Delta Variant impact the employment picture? Does the Delta Variant impact the school re-openings? You know, some of these kids can’t get vaccinations, and how does that work and what will happen there? Because that has a lot to do with what’s happening with the employment picture.
The Delta Variant has all of these weird little avenues to have an impact on what’s happening, at least from an economic standpoint, or from a stock market standpoint. So far, things are okay, but it’s something we’ll just continue to watch as far as that goes. But very interesting times. I’ve said this before, this is a historic event, and watching how this unfolds and what actually happens and what we do with this, I think is going to be really fascinating. So look forward to talking to you tomorrow. Thank you very much.