Moving Forward
Your future is here - do you see it?
Many, if not most, people have never been to America’s newest national park, New River Gorge National Park, in West Virginia, but I have, long before it was fully protected only a few weeks ago in December. My great friend Alex took me and our buddies there several years ago, a few hours drive from Washington D.C., where we rafted whitewater rapids through this dramatic Appalachian canyon set in one of America’s most beautiful states. And yet, only miles from this extraordinary place, entire mountains lay in ruins, having been violently detonated by “mountaintop removal” coal mining.
A new Presidential Administration took office on January 20, over a week ago, and with breathtaking speed has inaugurated a period where it is far more likely that parks will be created than mountains removed. This change is made possible by the many technological advances made in this (but not only in this) country in the last decades in renewable energy, which is now less expensive to generate than fossil fuel energy. Rather than deny this reality, the new President fully recognizes this and many others as well, including the more ugly realities of climate change, racism, authoritarianism, and pandemic.
And while the new President (who means get real when he says “C’mon Man”) will be ceaselessly opposed by many during his term of office, he is far, far from alone in recognizing realities. Yesterday, for example, the CEO of General Motors, Mary Barra, announced that the storied and important company that she leads will no longer produce internal combustion vehicles by 2035, 14 short years from now. GM stock rose 4% on the news, and is now up about 100% since August, contributing wonderfully to your portfolio. Already, the most valuable auto company in the world, Tesla, makes only battery-powered vehicles. The entire stock market itself is buoyed, as it always has been, by valuations based almost entirely on future products, services, earnings, and events.
The future, therefore, has already arrived, and yet a huge population of Americans continue to fight it. They fight it on social media boards, on television, in chat rooms, and in private gatherings. They even fight it now - literally to death - in the halls of Congress. For all of its promise, the future is eternally burdened to fight rearguard actions against those who, wasting their and our precious and non-renewable energy, believe they should and can prevent it, even though they never will.
There is a reason I named my company New Capital: I firmly believe in renewal. My belief has not been a passive choice, but something that I was forced to accept as a child, and embrace as an adult. When I was five years old, my mother died of cancer, leaving me, my two year old brother, and my father. Since then, my own life (far from easy just like yours) has been a constant process of renewal, of remembering the past, but also trying to make the choice to move forward. Every time I have made that choice - every time - especially and most importantly with a new mother who adopted us when I was seven, and with a new sister when I was nine, I have been rewarded by life.
It is now time for every single American to move forward. Each of us should begin with ourselves, before moving on to help others do the same.
The future, your future, is here - do you see it? If not, I invite you to click here to make an appointment so we can visit and, possibly, look for it together.
Leonard Golub, CFA
Fiduciary Financial Advisor