Circle Back
I recently had a circle back moment. Perhaps you know what I am talking about. A time where, for one reason or another, you find yourself back in a familiar place. My example is personal but these types of cyclical occurrences (a fancy way of saying a circle back moment) are more commonplace than we might think…
My most recent circle back moment is when we found out where our son will be stationed for his first assignment in the United States Coast Guard. He will be heading to a boat station in the Great Lakes. Ironically, he could have been stationed anywhere in the whole United States and somehow it was chosen that he would be near home at the town where I proposed to my wife. It’s also the town where we celebrated my son’s baptism by renting a house for friends and family. We had other family experiences there too. His journey as a “Coastie” will retrace footsteps from the past and I am so happy for it!
Can you think of your circle back moments? Was it an experience at work? Perhaps you returned to the place you started your career? Or you looked over your shoulder one day and see your mentee take the reins similar to when you took them for your mentor?
So many circle back moments happen as we watch our kids acting in a school theater production or playing an instrument in a concert or dancing in a recital. Think about sports. Our kids sometimes play on the same fields or rinks where we did in our youth. Sometimes we see them succeed or fail as we did on the gridiron. Or the act of going to a professional stadium always seems to connect us to the great plays and players that came before today.
Circle back moments are all around us.
In the capital markets there are a plethora of cycles and patterns that retread familiar territory too. Some of us might remember the inflationary times of the 1970s and then we circle back again here in the last few years with post-pandemic inflation shocks to our economy and politics. Or how about boom and bust cycles? Nobody reading this blog is likely to remember the 1929 stock market crash, but many of us remember the fear and anxiety of the great financial recession of 2008-2009.
Not all circle back moments in the markets are negative though. Just this past year, we saw international and emerging stock markets outperforming US markets in marked ways. This used to happen on a fairly regular seven-year cycle, but it has not happened to this degree in some 20 years. But alas, here we are again, circling back.
In a now rather infamous 1849 quote, Alphonse Kerr wrote, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” This tells us that nothing is brand new with the circle back moment. These moments always seem fresh—sometimes scary and sometimes nostalgic. Just know they are bound to take place. Embrace them, enjoy them, and occasionally brace yourself for them.