I have always had faith that investors can make good decisions if they simply know how the game is played and what rules they have to play under. A big part of my job has always been to cut through the white noise that assaults investors every day and bring some sort of sensibility to the investment process. That is why I wrote the book “Top 40 Rules.” It doesn’t tell you what to do; it tells you how to do it. It’s the whole “Give a person a fish and feed them for a day, teach them to fish and feed them for a lifetime” kind of thing.

I’m really not sure how you do it on your own anymore when the deck is so stacked against you. Recently the Securities and Exchange Commission begin enforcing their Regulation Best Interest (Reg BI) rule. It is an attempt to get the vast majority of investment professionals to at least try to do what is right for the client. There are exemptions that allow many investment professionals to comply with the regulation without complying with the spirit of the rule.

The same day, the Department of Labor came out with a proposal to roll back many of the rules put in place a couple of years ago and allow investment professionals to work under conflicts of interest that are not in the best interest of retirement plan participants. All in the name of fair play but, in actuality, in the name of corporate profit. It appears that putting the client’s needs first coupled with full disclosure and transparency just isn’t as profitable as the buyer beware model that so many investment firms have been using.

There has also been a recent report from the White House that the President wants all Americans to know that the percentage growth in the workforce, corporate revenue, user taxes, etc. in the second quarter is unprecedented. We have never had this kind of percentage growth before and he promised that the third quarter would be even better and that he would have those numbers to us before the election.

I remember the old saying, “If you torture the numbers long enough, they will tell you anything.” He is not lying, but, as my father used to say, “Half the truth is often a great lie.” We, as a country, were sent home in March. Corporate revenue plummeted as businesses were shuttered. Now they are open again and selling merchandise. So, if your business sold $1,000 of merchandise in April and sold $10,000 in May that is a 1000% increase in sales. That is incredible, except for the fact that you did $50,000 in sales last year in May, so you are still down 80% from the year before.

We have a long way to go to get back to where we were before the coronavirus took over our lives. We are headed in the right direction. But you, as investors, have to see through all the rhetoric and half-truths that are inundating our airwaves and try to make good decisions. It would be hard enough if you got the whole truth, but it is so much harder only getting half of it and for that I am truly sorry.