Due to recent market turbulence, Appleton Group continues to hold extremely high historic cash positions across all risk-managed and hybrid strategies. For our retired clients and those taking periodic withdrawals, the amount of assets that are insulated from market risk is often enough to last more than 15 years of normal sustainable distributions. This is an extreme adjustment away from the positions we target, but is prudent given current conditions.

I’ll have more market commentary as the week goes on, especially in light of what’s happening in the bond market. That’s an area to which we’ve also reduced exposure, and is the market that can give us the most information about what comes next in the economy.

I want to shift quickly to a different topic, though, and one that is extremely important to know. And that’s that the advisors and staff of Appleton Group have been preparing for this kind of event for years. Not specifically for a global pandemic of course, but for the possibility of these kinds of market disruptions. Long-term clients know that our focus on flexible, risk-managed and hybrid strategies wasn’t by accident – it was our intention to offer strategies that prepare for both good times and bad, and this is by far the worst we’ve seen in more than a decade. But we have been and continue to be prepared as best we can.

We have a business continuity plan in-place – we have since 2005, and we test it regularly. Certain elements of this plan have already been activated, such as splitting up advisor teams geographically, working remotely, utilizing home offices, and utilizing a variety of ways to ensure that lines of communication between staff and our clients remain in-place. Our email posts are just one example, and of course there are many more.
During times like this, it’s especially important to know that our firm is stable, we’re here for our clients through thick and thin, and we’re operating as normal. Appleton Group maintains a healthy cash reserve to ensure that we can continue to operate during periods of economic stress – we really do practice what we preach.

Over the past three weeks of market stress, we’ve experienced 100% uptime in all Appleton Group systems, including trading, daily reconciliations and so many of the key operational aspects of our firm that our clients probably take for granted, which of course they should. We have easily worked around temporary interruptions for some third-party vendors, which have been very manageable. We know that you’re counting on us to execute your investing and wealth management plans, and while we certainly haven’t been immune to these severe market swings we are executing our business continuity and wealth management plans quite well.

So we’ll leave it there for now, and please be sure to check in with us either here online, over the phone, and in-person if absolutely necessary.