by Chad Meyer

As the temperature finally drops, the landscape subtly shifts, and children everywhere resignedly dig out their real shoes and dust off their school uniforms, it’s difficult not to take pleasure in the perennial change that autumn brings. As anyone who has watched more seasons pass than they care to admit knows, this brand of change—the predictable kind—doesn’t really count as change at all. Instead, it represents a keeping of plans, and all the comforts that come with knowing the world is still spinning right on schedule.

Of course, in an autumn like this one, even the most optimistic among us could be forgiven for suspecting that there may be a different sort of change afoot—and that whatever “schedule” once reigned is now subject to revision with a few hours’ notice. As a glance at the evening news suggests, our country is plainly on the brink of a dramatic and unpredictable change on multiple fronts. From the hurricanes rocking our nation’s shores, to the political debates rocking our national dialogue, to the looming prospect of war with North Korea, stability appears to be a commodity that grows scarcer in America by the day.

Nor, it would seem, is the the financial sector bucking the trend. As hordes of market commentators (and, perhaps, your local cabbie) will eagerly attest, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and various other “crypto-currencies” may well be on the verge of sending dollar bills the way of the dodo bird. But even as the market’s enthusiasm for digital currency renders it the hottest asset class of the year, all the fervor has some experts crying foul. Bitcoin “is a fraud,” declared JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon at a recent investor conference. “It’s just not a real thing.”

Finally, and perhaps most perplexingly, there’s the stock market itself, humming along nicely as the world around it rattles and shakes. In the third quarter of 2017, the Dow Jones, S&P500, and NASDAQ all rose by roughly 4% or more, with the latter index posting gains of nearly 6%. That level of performance and the low volatility that attended to it have, in some circles, given rise to the anxiety that the market is “ignoring” broader macroeconomic trends. Doesn’t the market see (so this brand of hand-wringing goes) all the change that’s lurking about?

Put simply, it does, but it also recalls that it has seen all this before. For the last two hundred years, while America has faced conflicts and crises of every ilk, at home and abroad, the U.S. stock market has quietly chugged along as one of the most reliable wealth creation vehicles in the history of mankind. And at the risk of seeming old-fashioned, we here at Tufton Capital tend to believe it’s going to keep chugging, no matter how the wind howls outside our door.

In a world that changes by the minute, we thank you for the opportunity to protect and grow your capital, and we remain honored by the trust you’ve placed in us.