View From New York: The Future is what it is!

As the US goes through back-to-back Convention weeks by both the political parties in August, the focus continues to be on the impact of the Covid -19 crisis with unemployment now settling down to still 10 million-plus out of work, though this has come down significantly from 40 million in the initial stages in April.

Depending upon which channel one watches in the US you can either be very optimistic about the current state of affairs or very pessimistic.

While the politics will continue until the November elections, there was due cause for celebration this week with Apple crossing the $2 trillion market-cap, a historic first for any publicly-traded company in the world and recognition of the fact that Tim Cook has surpassed expectations beyond the wildest imagination of any investor on Wall Street.

The one common denominator that seems to be applicable to India and to the US is the utter disbelief by most investors about the disconnect between the rise in the stock market and the unfortunate reality of the economy that we are grappling with.

Adding more misery to this is the spread of riots, high crime and protests in many cities across the US that law enforcement is struggling to cope with.

It seems that people have momentarily forgotten that the US is a nation of immigrants that is a cocoon of inspiration for all around the world and right now that seems to be taking a back seat. but I am sure not for long.

We are clearly in the midst of a global crisis and by that I don’t mean the Covid-19 crisis, as I am optimistic the human race has the capability to come up with a vaccine or an antibody sooner rather than later and this is a good test of our resilience as a race.

While the world is working on developing a vaccine or an antibody solution a Parsi from Pune, India is toiling to be the prodigal White Knight planning to ride on his horse just as John Wayne did more than century back to bring joy to the all by working to effectively manufacture the world’s first mass vaccine to save lives.

Though the view from New York is that India’s first quarter GDP may be worse than expected, as the stock market has never seen earnings that have been so low in more than 30 years if not more, the index continues to hover at a record of over 30 times PE.

In the midst of all this doom and gloom, there are rays of shining light such as the turnaround of Yes Bank that was backed by the government and is seen to be a good example of how the government can step in during times of crisis with the right mix of home grown leadership and vision to bring stability to a bank that was on the verge of collapsing and taking many other institutions along with it.

For those looking to invest for a brighter future in India, a global allocation strategy is almost a necessity with a credit squeeze affecting businesses in India and a lower growth on the horizon.

At the cost of sounding gloomy about the future, the bigger risk may be a making of our own again and our ability to create a scenario akin to the War of the Worlds. By that I mean both the first world and the third world with the US and China and China and India, China and Japan, China and Europe and so on…

The reality is that peace seems to be a distant dream for the world thus leading to economic wars followed by more debilitating scenarios that no one can afford in the future. If we don’t prepare for this today it will be at our own cost in the future.

After all the future will be what it is!!!