by Neil Jensen

As Lenin famously said, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” Last month felt like one of those times. Here are my non-investment related impressions of the month in numbers.

17 — The number of Steadyhanders working hard to serve you. Like all firms in our industry we have a business continuity plan and periodically have members of the team working at home. Nevertheless, it was a surreal series of events as we first started telling the team to not come in if they were at risk, and then as the days went by telling almost everyone to work from home to do our part to help “flatten the curve”. Planning to work remotely for a short period of time due to an earthquake is also different than having the team working remotely for months. We’re having to tweak our processes and make extra efforts to ensure that we are collaborating effectively.

837 — The number of inbound calls to our 1-888 line. We answered 94.5% of them directly with an average time to pick up of 14 seconds (with the small balance going to voicemail). We fielded a lot of calls and emails from worried clients. Compounding that, the team is faced with the same worries as everyone else — the health of their families and friends, the economy, and their own personal wealth. Despite that, I’m incredibly proud of how steady and empathetic we were on the phones and in our email communications with clients.

$3.7 million — Net client inflows to our funds. While many in the industry are seeing net redemptions, we were fortunate to eke out a positive influx.

35 — The number of new clients we added. Welcome, we hope the rest of your time with us is a little less exciting! (And thank you to our clients who warmly introduced/referred their friends to us — your continued confidence is enormously appreciated.)

5 & 25 — With university classes canceled, my eldest son returned home making five of us in the house again. My wife Kris and I celebrated our 25th anniversary — takeout Italian was not what we had originally planned but given the circumstances we are just thankful that everyone is healthy.

Personally, I was quite unsettled in the middle of the month, but we have definitely found our rhythm and I’m excited to get back to working on some of the projects we have planned for the year.

We’ll be publishing our Quarterly Report this week (along with our client statements). I encourage you to read it to get a better sense of how we’ve been managing your money in this challenging environment.

Needless to say, I hope you all stay healthy and be safe.