March, 2020
These attributes have loomed large in my mind over the last month as the world responds to the spread of COVID-19. While there have been a few encouraging signs of exemplary leadership and resilience, it must be acknowledged that more weaknesses than strengths have been exposed. My hope is that our civic leaders quickly share best practices and implement better policies to minimize further impacts from this outbreak. Meanwhile, our thoughts are with everyone as we all respond to the fast moving events.
At Terra Alpha, our entire team is now working remotely to limit our potential for spreading the coronavirus. This has no day-to-day impact on our team’s ability to do their work or our firm’s ability to manage the funds. We have also been in contact with key third-party service providers to understand their own contingency planning.
Beyond the immediate challenges of COVID-19, which should not be minimized, my hope is that we (as a global community) quickly begin to identify and rectify system failures and make much better response plans for future pandemics. Building greater resilience into our health care infrastructure is clearly essential to better mitigate, minimize, and manage future threats. I am optimistic that better leadership will be borne out of this experience.
In terms of Terra Alpha’s funds, we continue to assess what, if any, long-term impacts the outbreak will have on society and the economy. There is no doubt that the short-term impacts will be significant and widespread. We are very grateful to our investors for their confidence in our long-only, long-term investment approach. My professional investment history in the markets dates back to before 1987’s Black Monday and travels through many market gyrations since; our team’s collective recollection and understanding of these events informs the perspective of the entire team. While the drop in the global markets since February 12th has been painful for all investors, we continue to focus on the identification of companies which have the resilience and leadership to deliver long-term sustainable returns despite the challenges created by our rapidly changing world.
Stay well,
Tim Dunn and the Terra Alpha team