Dear Valued Clients and Friends,
This is the one week of the year where I bypass market commentary and economic analysis in the Dividend Café, and instead just focus on, well, Thanksgiving. It is not because I want a week off from doing market commentary and analysis – writing the weekly Dividend Café is one of the great joys of my professional life and I cherish doing it each and every week (there is thanksgiving #1 in this letter). Rather, I realize that with the shortened market week, the logistics of family arriving (or people traveling to family), and the general frame of mind on this special weekend, that it just serves as a really logical week to take a break from the Fed, global GDP growth, the trade war, earnings, and market valuations.
And affirmatively, we should be doing a Thanksgiving edition of Dividend Café every week, because that is how much gratitude we have at The Bahnsen Group.
Though I am the one penning this, I know I speak for my entire team when I say that we are most grateful for our clients – those who have entrusted their financial well-being to our business. We are blessed not only with clients who like us but clients whom we like. We are grateful to share in our clients lives, fears, hopes, dreams, and goals. And I can say this: We are blessed to share in our client’s stories, how they achieved the financial position they did, and what their journey has entailed. I am utterly enthralled by the tales of the American dream captured in our client roster at The Bahnsen Group, and it is a huge source of Thanksgiving to be in partnership with our truly special, wonderful clients. I have said it so many times over the years but it bears repeating – the joy one has in this business is in direct proportion to the quality of client relationships one enjoys. And joy overfloweth at The Bahnsen Group …
Dividend Cafe – Podcast
Dividend Cafe – Video
I elaborated on all of this in the podcast, but I am so, so thankful for the people I get to work with each and every day at The Bahnsen Group. We are a missional organization, totally devoted to the mission we have to be extraordinary and to deliver an extraordinary experience for our clients. I look at the partners and advisors I have and thank God for such devoted and capable professionals I am blessed to have around me. Brian, Kimberlee, Deiya, Robert, Don, Trevor, and Sean are first-class professionals, friends, and client-centric practitioners who have made us a better business and made me a better advisor.
Departmentally, what Jacqueline O’Hare means to our Operations group and overall business cannot be quantified. Beth, Alexis, and Camille have become the best operations group I have ever seen and I am fully confident that each and every day our clients operational needs are so, so well-covered. But beyond the coverage of operational needs, there is a special TLC they bring to their work every day that I appreciate immensely. Deiya has made our investment solutions department a force of high-quality analytics and trading efficiency, and we are processing a significant volume of activity each and every day, and doing it with nearly uninterrupted optimization. Kenny is becoming a star of an analyst and trader, and this year saw TBG welcome a new Equity Research Director in Julien who has significantly elevated our research depth. Brian Tong runs a Communications department that is a huge part of our secret sauce, curating, producing, and distributing a huge volume of content and thought leadership to our clients and community, and constantly upping the game around this entire department. Glen is a secret force, and I could not be more grateful for what they have done. Joleen has been running our branding and client events for well over a year now, and the results speak for themselves. We are a better business, more hospitable, more connectable, and more dynamic – around the work of her department. Ericca has become a star of an office manager and is continually striving to drive a better office visit experience for clients. And my Executive Assistant, Kelsey, gets to manage the calendar and daily affairs of a really busy and challenging person every day. Her work is vital and highly appreciated, and I am so thankful to have found her.
I am thankful for our major asset management partners – from Blackstone to Vontobel to Voya to Alliance Bernstein to iCapital to Baron to Miller-Howard. We love the collaboration, the intellectual capital, and most importantly, the shared vision for optimizing returns on capital and management of risk.
We are thankful for our friends at HighTower, still providing extraordinary back office services from technology to billing to compliance, etc. They do best what we do worst, and that is how it is supposed to be! They are friends and allies, and we are thankful.
I won’t bore you with the list of every vendor, landlord, provider, service, and entity or person we deal with each and every day. We work with great people, for great people, and it is a huge reason for Thanksgiving.
I am thankful to the foundation of all of this, the God who has provided for all of us so plentifully. And of course, I am thankful to live and work in a country that values capital markets, cherishes entrepreneurial success, and facilitates the chance to create better lives for ourselves and our families through free people, free markets, and an aspirational mindset. We never take this for granted.
So Happy Thanksgiving to all of you, and may your holiday weekend be filled with reflection of gratitude, blessings, and joy, and may next week’s Dividend Café come soon. I miss it already.
With regards,
David L. Bahnsen
Chief Investment Officer, Managing Partner
dbahnsen@thebahnsengroup.com
The Bahnsen Group
www.thebahnsengroup.com
This week’s Dividend Café features research from S&P, Baird, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, and the IRN research platform of FactSet
