Connect with us

Spread & Containment

UN Initiative Targets And Doxxes Doctors And Nurses Who Don’t Follow COVID-19 Narrative

UN Initiative Targets And Doxxes Doctors And Nurses Who Don’t Follow COVID-19 Narrative

Authored by Katie Spence via The Epoch Times (emphasis…

Published

on

UN Initiative Targets And Doxxes Doctors And Nurses Who Don't Follow COVID-19 Narrative

Authored by Katie Spence via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Nicole Sirotek is a registered nurse in Nevada with over a decade of experience working in some of the harshest conditions. When a hurricane devastated Puerto Rico, Sirotek and the organization she founded, American Frontline Nurses (AFLN), were there and gave out over 500 pounds of medical equipment and supplies.

National flags in front of the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. A group started as part of the United Nations Verified initiative has targeted nurses and doctors who don't follow the official narrative on COVID-19. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP)

She hasn’t hesitated to be the first in when an emergency hits and medical professionals are needed. She’s lost count of the number of times she’s woken up on a cot in the middle of nowhere, boots still strapped to her feet, and ready to go.

But in tears during an interview with The Epoch Times, she detailed her ordeal with harassment and doxing over the past year and how she’s contemplated suicide due to crippling anxiety and depression.

It took such a toll on my mental health. I wasn’t sleeping and wasn’t eating,” Sirotek said.

To regain her mental health, she decided to step back from the group she started. But even that decision brought pain.

I said after I left New York, I’d do everything that I can to make sure it didn’t happen again,” Sirotek said, recalling the death she witnessed when she volunteered in New York as a nurse at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I mean, for me to step back and take a break just makes me feel like I failed!”

A mobile station in New York on Dec. 29, 2021. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)

Sirotek is the victim of ongoing harassment. She’s received pictures of her children posed in slaughterhouses and hanging from a noose, drive-by photos of her house, and letters with white powder that exploded upon opening.

The Nevada State Board of Nursing was inundated with calls for Sirotek’s professional demise and flooded with anonymous complaints.

These complaints trace back to Team Halo, a social media influencer campaign formed as part of the United Nations Verified initiative and the Vaccine Confidence Project.

In response, Sirotek filed a police report. Her lawyer sent a cease-and-desist letter. The Epoch Times reviewed the documents.

The reply from the cease-and-desist letter? The client was acting within his First Amendment rights.

The Harassment Begins

In February 2022, Sirotek, as the face of AFLN, a patient advocacy network that boasts 22,000 nurses, appeared before Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and testified about the harm patients were experiencing when they sought treatment for COVID-19.

She said she didn’t witness patients dying from the novel virus when she volunteered to work the front lines in New York at the start of the pandemic.

Instead, in her opinion, as a medical professional with multiple master’s degrees, patients were dying from “negligence” and “medical malfeasance.

Sirotek detailed the withholding by higher-ups of steroids and Ibuprofen and the prescribing of remdesivir. Additionally, there was zero willingness to consider possible early intervention treatments like ivermectin.

As the pandemic continued, such practices only escalated, Sirotek said.

Sirotek’s testimony resulted in cheers, widespread attention, and a target on her back.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) (C) speaks during a panel discussion titled COVID-19: A Second Opinion in Washington DC Jan. 24, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

[The harassment] all started the day we got back from DC,” Sirotek said.

At first, the attacks started with the typical “you’re transphobic, you’re anti-LGBTQ. I mean, they even called me racist,” Sirotek, who is Hispanic, recalled.

And as more patients sought AFLN’s help, the attacks increased in frequency and force.

At first, Sirotek said the attacks appeared to come from random people. But as the attacks continued, the terms “Project Halo,” “Team Halo,” and “#TeamHalo” continually cropped up. Especially on TikTok and from two accounts, “@jesss2019” and “@thatsassynp.”

“[@thatsassynp] just kept on saying how I was spreading misinformation, [that] ivermectin doesn’t work,” Sirotek said. “He kept targeting the Nevada State Board of Nursing because I was on the Practice Act Committee, and he did not feel like that was acceptable.”

Craig Perry, a lawyer representing nurses, including Sirotek, before the Nevada State Board of Nursing, confirmed Sirotek’s account. The executive director of the Nevada State Board of Nursing, Cathy Dinauer, declined to provide details on complaints or investigations, stating to The Epoch Times via email that they are “confidential.”

Sirotek said the complaints overwhelmed her ability to defend her nursing license.

“Untimely, they were filing so many complaints against me that [the Nevada State Board of Nursing] had to start filtering them as to what was applicable and not applicable. And [the complaints] just buried my nursing license to the point that we couldn’t even defend it,” Sirotek said.

Attacks Transition to Threats

Whenever Sirotek, or AFLN, tried to set up a community outreach webinar, hateful comments flooded their videos.

Julia McCabe, a registered nurse and the director of advocacy services for AFLN, told The Epoch Times that initially, they tried kicking the trolls out of the outreach videos. But they couldn’t keep up with the overwhelming numbers and had to shut the videos down, usually after only 10 minutes, she said.

To address the swarms, as McCabe labeled them, AFLN started charging an entrance fee for their webinars. But, McCabe said, they’d send out an email with a free access code to all of their subscribers before the webinar started. It helped, but not enough. The swarms kept coming. And the attacks escalated.

On June 5, 2022, @thatsassynp posted a video on TikTok calling for a “serious public uprising,” because the Nevada State Board of Nursing and other regulatory agencies weren’t disciplining nurses for spreading “disinformation.”

It became one of many such videos in the ensuing days. In the comments of one, he stated, “Also, stay tuned as [@jesss2019] will be addressing this as well. We are teaming up (as per usual) to raise awareness and demand action on this issue.” @jesss2019 responded, “Yes!!!! We will get this taken care of.”

Jess and Tyler Kuhk of @thatsassynp have “teamed up” on several occasions, targeting healthcare workers who question the COVID-19 narrative. Team Halo doesn’t officially list Kuhk on its site, but Kuhk posts with the #teamhalo.

In another video, he states, “If you’re new to this series, PLEASE watch the videos in my playlist ‘Nevada board of nursing.’ This started in Feb of this year.” His video has almost 35,000 “loves.”

On June 7, 2022, @jesss2019 posted a video on TikTok accusing Sirotek of spreading misinformation. It included a link to @thatsassynp, and his complaints about Sirotek to the Nevada State Board of Nursing and calls to remove her from the Practice Act Committee. She implored TikTok to boost the message. It, too, became one of many videos attacking Sirotek.

Specifically, @jesss2019 and @thatsassynp took issue with videos and posts from Sirotek, and AFLN, advocating for ivermectin and highlighting possible issues with remdesivir and the COVID-19 vaccines.

@jess2019 removed all of the above videos after The Epoch Times sought comment. The Epoch Times retains copies.

Sirotek says she received the first death threat against herself and her children around the same time, in June 2022.

“They cut off the pictures of my children’s faces from our family photos, where we take them every year on our front porch—we’ve got 11 years of those photos—and they cut them out and put them on the bodies of those little boys that have been sexually abused. And that’s what would get sent to my house. And I gave the police that,” Sirotek said.

In response to a request for comment from The Epoch Times, Sen. Johnson defended Sirotek.

“The COVID Cartel continues to frighten and silence those who tell the truth and challenge their failed response to COVID,” Johnson said. “It is simply wrong for Ms. Sirotek to be smeared and attacked like so many others who have had the courage and compassion to successfully treat COVID patients.”

As the threats continued and escalated, Sirotek also asked Perry to send a cease-and-desist letter to Tyler Kuhk on Aug. 1, 2022.

Kuhk, a nurse practitioner, is the person posting on TikTok under the pseudonym @thatsassynp.

The TikTok logo is pictured outside the company’s U.S. head office in Culver City, California, on Sept. 15, 2020. (Mike Blake/Reuters)

The letter sent to Kuhk alleges that on at least 10 different occasions, @thatsassynp encouraged a “public uprising” against Sirotek. It also details that his videos attacking Sirotek garnered over 400,000 views.

In response, McLetchie Law, a “boutique law firm serving prominent and emerging … media entities” responded to Perry by stating in a letter dated Aug. 16, 2022, “Both Nevada law and the First Amendment provide robust protections for our client’s (and others’) rights to criticize Ms. Sirotek’s dangerous views and practices—and to advocate for her removal from the Nursing Practice Advisory Committee of the Nevada State Board of Nursing.”

It also warned that any attempt to deter Kuhk from his chosen path would “backfire” and could result in a “negative financial impact.” Neither Kuhk nor McLetchie Law responded to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

Unable to confirm the real name behind the TikTok account @jesss2019, and thus, unable to send her a legal letter, Sirotek posted some of the threats she’d received on Facebook, pleading for @jesss2019 to cease targeting her, and recognize the possible real-world harm.

In desperation, Sirotek asked Perry to file a legal name change, which he did on Sep. 15, 2022, hoping that would thwart people’s ability to look up Sirotek’s information. Perry told The Epoch Times, “Usually, when you do a name change, it’s a public record. But under extenuating circumstances, you can have that sealed.”

In Sirotek’s case, the court recognized the threat to her and her family’s safety, waived the publication requirement, granted the change, and sealed her record on Oct. 4, 2022.

Sirotek, at the behest of Perry, filed a police report detailing the harassment on Oct. 17, 2022.

In December 2022, @jesss2019 posted a video to TikTok doxing Sirotek by revealing her name change. The Epoch Times sought comment from @jesss2019 but has not received a response. After the request for comment, the user removed the video.

Team Halo and Social Media

On Dec. 17, 2020, Theo Bertram, a director at TikTok; Iain Bundred, the head of public policy at YouTube; and Rebecca Stimson, the UK head of public policy for Facebook, appeared before the UK’s House of Commons to explain what their social media sites were doing to combat “anti-vaccination disinformation.”

All three stated their companies employed a “two-pronged approach.” Specifically, “tackle disinformation and promote trusted content.”

Bundred stated that from the beginning of the year to November 2020, YouTube had removed 750,000 videos that promoted “Covid disinformation.”

The logos of Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat on mobile devices in a combination of 2017–2022 photos. (AP Photo)

Stimson stated that between March and October 2020, “12 million pieces of content were removed from [Facebook],” and it had labeled 167 million pieces with a warning.

Bertram stated that for the first six months of 2020, TikTok removed 1,500 accounts for “Covid violation” and had recently increased that activity. “In the last two months, we took action against 1,380 accounts, so you can see the level of action is increasing,” Bertram said.

“In October, we began work with Team Halo,” Bertram added. “I do not know if you are familiar with Team Halo. It is run by the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and is about getting reliable, trusted scientists and doctors on to social media to spread trusted information.”

Team Halo’s Origins

On Sep. 20, 2022, Melissa Fleming, the under-secretary-general for global communications at the United Nations, appeared at the World Economic Forum to discuss how the United Nations was “Tackling Disinformation” regarding “health guidance” as well as the “safety and efficacy of the vaccine” for COVID-19.

A key strategy that we had was to deploy influencers,” Fleming stated. “Influencers who were really keen, who had huge followings, but really keen to help carry messages that were going to serve their communities.”

Fleming also explained that the United Nations knew its messaging wouldn’t resonate as well as influencers, so they developed Team Halo.

“We had another trusted messenger project, which was called Team Halo, where we trained scientists around the world, and some doctors, on TikTok. We had TikTok working with us,” Fleming said. “It was a layered deployment of ideas and tactics.”

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/01/2023 - 23:25

Read More

Continue Reading

Government

Fauci And The CIA: A New Explanation Emerges

Fauci And The CIA: A New Explanation Emerges

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via Brownstone Institute,

Jeremy Farrar’s book from August 2021…

Published

on

Fauci And The CIA: A New Explanation Emerges

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via Brownstone Institute,

Jeremy Farrar’s book from August 2021 is relatively more candid than most accounts of the initial decision to lock down in the US and UK. “It’s hard to come off nocturnal calls about the possibility of a lab leak and go back to bed,” he wrote of the clandestine phone calls he was getting from January 27-31, 2020. They had already alerted the FBI and MI5. 

“I’d never had trouble sleeping before, something that comes from spending a career working as a doctor in critical care and medicine. But the situation with this new virus and the dark question marks over its origins felt emotionally overwhelming. None of us knew what was going to happen but things had already escalated into an international emergency. On top of that, just a few of us – Eddie [Holmes], Kristian [Anderson], Tony [Fauci] and I – were now privy to sensitive information that, if proved to be true, might set off a whole series of events that would be far bigger than any of us. It felt as if a storm was gathering, of forces beyond anything I had experienced and over which none of us had any control.”

At that point in the trajectory of events, intelligence services on both sides of the Atlantic had been put on notice. Anthony Fauci also received confirmation that money from the National Institutes of Health had been channeled to the offending lab in Wuhan, which meant that his career was on the line. Working at a furious pace, the famed “Proximal Origin” paper was produced in record time. It concluded that there was no lab leak. 

In a remarkable series of revelations this week, we’ve learned that the CIA was involved in trying to make payments to those authors (thank you whistleblower), plus it appears that Fauci made visits to the CIA’s headquarters, most likely around the same time. 

Suddenly we get some possible clarity in what has otherwise been a very blurry picture. The anomaly that has heretofore cried out for explanation is how it is that Fauci changed his mind so dramatically and precisely on the merit of lockdowns for the virus. One day he was counseling calm because this was flu-like, and the next day he was drumming up awareness of the coming lockdown. That day was February 27, 2020, the same day that the New York Times joined with alarmist propaganda from its lead virus reporter Donald G. McNeil

On February 26, Fauci was writing: “Do not let the fear of the unknown… distort your evaluation of the risk of the pandemic to you relative to the risks that you face every day… do not yield to unreasonable fear.”

The next day, February 27, Fauci wrote actress Morgan Fairchild – likely the most high-profile influencer he knew from the firmament – that “be prepared to mitigate an outbreak in this country by measures that include social distancing, teleworking, temporary closure of schools, etc.”

To be sure, twenty-plus days had passed between the time Fauci alerted intelligence and when he decided to become the voice for lockdowns. We don’t know the exact date of the meetings with the CIA. But generally until now, most of February 2020 has been a blur in terms of the timeline. Something was going on but we hadn’t known just what. 

Let’s distinguish between a proximate and distal cause of the lockdowns.

The proximate cause is the fear of a lab leak and an aping of the Wuhan strategy of keeping everyone in their homes to stop the spread. They might have believed this would work, based on the legend of how SARS-1 was controlled. The CIA had dealings with Wuhan and so did Fauci. They both had an interest in denying the lab leak and stopping the spread. The WHO gave them cover. 

The distal reasons are more complicated. What stands out here is the possibility of a quid pro quo. The CIA pays scientists to say there was no lab leak and otherwise instructs its kept media sources (New York Times) to call the lab leak a conspiracy theory of the far right. Every measure would be deployed to keep Fauci off the hot seat for his funding of the Wuhan lab. But this cooperation would need to come at a price. Fauci would need to participate in a real-life version of the germ games (Event 201 and Crimson Contagion). 

It would be the biggest role of Fauci’s long career. He would need to throw out his principles and medical knowledge of, for example, natural immunity and standard epidemiology concerning the spread of viruses and mitigation strategies. The old pandemic playbook would need to be shredded in favor of lockdown theory as invented in 2005 and then tried in Wuhan. The WHO could be relied upon to say that this strategy worked. 

Fauci would need to be on TV daily to somehow persuade Americans to give up their precious rights and liberties. This would need to go on for a long time, maybe all the way to the election, however implausible this sounds. He would need to push the vaccine for which he had already made a deal with Moderna in late January. 

Above all else, he would need to convince Trump to go along. That was the hardest part. They considered Trump’s weaknesses. He was a germaphobe so that’s good. He hated Chinese imports so it was merely a matter of describing the virus this way. But he also has a well-known weakness for deferring to highly competent and articulate professional women. That’s where the highly reliable Deborah Birx comes in: Fauci would be her wingman to convince Trump to green-light the lockdowns. 

What does the CIA get out of this? The vast intelligence community would have to be put in charge of the pandemic response as the rule maker, the lead agency. Its outposts such as CISA would handle labor-related issues and use its contacts in social media to curate the public mind. This would allow the intelligence community finally to crack down on information flows that had begun 20 years earlier that they had heretofore failed to manage. 

The CIA would hobble and hamstring the US president, whom they hated. And importantly, there was his China problem. He had wrecked relations through his tariff wars. So far as they were concerned, this was treason because he did it all on his own. This man was completely out of control. He needed to be put in his place. To convince the president to destroy the US economy with his own hand would be the ultimate coup de grace for the CIA. 

A lockdown would restart trade with China. It did in fact achieve that. 

How would Fauci and the CIA convince Trump to lock down and restart trade with China? By exploiting these weaknesses and others too: his vulnerability to flattery, his desire for presidential aggrandizement, and his longing for Xi-like powers over all to turn off and then turn on a whole country. Then they would push Trump to buy the much-needed personal protective equipment from China. 

They finally got their way: somewhere between March 10 or possibly as late as March 14, Trump gave the go ahead. The press conference of March 16, especially those magical 70 seconds in which Fauci read the words mandating lockdowns because Birx turned out to be too squeamish, was the great turning point. A few days later, Trump was on the phone with Xi asking for equipment. 

In addition, such a lockdown would greatly please the digital tech industry, which would experience a huge boost in demand, plus large corporations like Amazon and WalMart, which would stay open as their competitors were closed. Finally, it would be a massive subsidy to pharma and especially the mRNA platform technology itself, which would enjoy the credit for ending the pandemic. 

If this whole scenario is true, it means that all along Fauci was merely playing a role, a front man for much deeper interests and priorities in the CIA-led intelligence community. This broad outline makes sense of why Fauci changed his mind on lockdowns, including the timing of the change. There are still many more details to know, but these new fragments of new information take our understanding in a new and more coherent direction. 

Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute. He is also Senior Economics Columnist for Epoch Times, author of 10 books, including Liberty or Lockdown, and thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/28/2023 - 17:40

Read More

Continue Reading

Government

Watch: Biden Tells People To Stop Questioning COVID Shots

Watch: Biden Tells People To Stop Questioning COVID Shots

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

In remarks made Wednesday, Joe Biden…

Published

on

Watch: Biden Tells People To Stop Questioning COVID Shots

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

In remarks made Wednesday, Joe Biden argued that people, including potential “leaders” should stop saying “inflammatory things” about COVID vaccinations and fall into line with what his administration is telling them to do.

“What leaders say matter, in terms of people’s confidence in things they’re not sure about,” biden began.

He continued, “And one of those areas — you saw what happened with regard to the crisis — health crisis that we had that cost us — we lost well over a million people. And as time began to move on, you had more and more voices saying, “No, no, no. You don’t need to get that shot. You don’t need to be — get — you don’t need to.”

“We have a new strain of COVID now, and we have answers for it,” Biden contended, further stating “I just would urge those in public life and both political parties or no political party to be cautious about the ac- — the sometimes inflammatory things you say about this, because people’s lives are at stake.”

Watch:

That will be the COVID shots that don’t prevent anyone from getting COVID or stop transmission of the virus then will it? The ones that cause more serious side effects in children than they do save lives?

The comments come in the wake of revelations that Anthony Fauci was secretly escorted into CIA and State Department meetings to steer the direction of the COVID origins investigation away from the lab leak evidence.

*  *  *

Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Summit Vitamins – super charge your health and well being.

Also, we urgently need your financial support here.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/28/2023 - 17:00

Read More

Continue Reading

International

Dollar cost averaging: navigating market volatility for long term success

Back in March 2022, Toby Roberts advocated for a dollar cost averaging approach to investing. Considering that The Montgomery Small Companies Fund has…

Published

on

Back in March 2022, Toby Roberts advocated for a dollar cost averaging approach to investing. Considering that The Montgomery Small Companies Fund has returned 11.19 per cent in the three months to 31 August, resulting in an outperformance of 8.97 per cent over its benchmark, I wanted to explore whether dollar cost averaging has provided another win for investors.

Back in March last year Toby wrote; “It is periods of uncertainty like this when investors may like to be reminded of the merits of dollar cost averaging. Dollar cost averaging is the investing strategy [equally] dividing up the total amount to be invested and periodically purchasing stocks, in an effort to reduce the impact of volatility and emotion on an investment. This is an investment strategy all Australian employees will be familiar with as it reflects the periodic contributions employers make into their superannuation.”

Importantly, a large lump sum invested at the beginning of a bull run in markets is always going to beat a dollar-cost-averaging approach, in which the investor holds a lot more cash until the amount earmarked has been fully invested. But during periods of volatility or major market declines, dollar cost averaging helps to ease the pain of falls while ensuring more units (of individual stocks or units in a managed fund) are purchased at cheaper prices as those prices get cheaper.

The Global Financial Crisis and the more recent COVID-19 pandemic were classic examples of events that inspired individuals to act in concert, producing the consequences of herd behaviour and panic. 

Thanks to the indefatigable and unchanging nature of human behaviour, such events are reasonably frequent – indeed, they should be expected. Tey inspire fear and apprehension, which is why the dollar cost averaging approach is a good method to consider. Dollar cost averaging takes the emotion out of investing and helps to ensure sensible decisions are made while also providing some comfort when the tide goes out. And keep in mind bear markets are transitory.

Rather than be frightened of the inevitable volatility, the dollar cost averaging strategy will see you excited by periods of panic and looking forward to the cheaper prices that ensue. 

For the U.S. S&P500, 2022 produced the seventh-worst calendar year return since 1928. But last year’s awful performance was a great thing for anyone who was putting money into the market on a periodic basis because bear markets are great for dollar cost averaging.

Before we examine the benefits of applying the dollar cost averaging approach suggested by Toby from March last year, lets revisit what the strategy is.

Dollar cost averaging, which can be applied to individual securities or stocks, index funds, and actively managed funds – the latter being my preference for young investors who have a great deal of time and very long runways for growth but no time to research investing in stocks directly.

Following an explanation of dollar cost averaging, we will explore a version I developed many years ago and first revealed to Ross Greenwood’s listeners when he hosted the 2GB Radio Money News program.

There are two ways to approach the stock market. The first, which is extremely popular, is betting on the ups and downs, to treat stocks like a gambler betting on black or red at the roulette wheel.  The problem with this approach is that the stock market becomes a casino, and the house usually wins.

The alternative is to recognize stocks are pieces of businesses.  Businesses create wealth by becoming more valuable because they generate growing profits, which can be distributed – even though they may not be.

Build value, ignore price

The process of a business creating wealth is a simple one, in theory. It’s much harder on the ground of course, requiring skill, intestinal fortitude, experience, teamwork, and a healthy dose of good fortune.

A company starts with some capital that has been contributed by its shareholders. If the venture is successful, the investment will generate revenues in excess of expenses, and a profit will accrue. This profit can then be distributed but may instead be reinvested, which builds on the original equity contributed and, therefore, the value of the enterprise. 

Think about it this way; a bank account is opened with $100,000 and earns a 20 per cent return from the interest in its first year. Now you must agree that would be a very special and valuable bank account. In fact, given that interest rates on term deposits, at the time of writing, are about four per cent, you could sell the special bank at an auction and someone would bid a lot more than the $120,000 it now has deposited after the first year. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if someone paid four or five times the balance of the bank account to own it. If they thought there was going to be a recession, or they thought interest rates might fall again, they’d be falling over themselves to own that special bank account for perhaps $500,000.

And if the bank account continued to earn 20 per cent annually for thirty years and the owner reinvested that interest, that bank account would have an equity balance of over $27 million and still be earning 20 per cent. Auction a $27 million bank account earning 20 per cent per annum and you can expect to see bids of more than $100 million (subject to interest rates at the time).

Can you see what I’ve done? I’ve just explained how businesses build wealth and how the stock market (the auction house) prices them.

The second approach to the stock market is to buy shares in those businesses that are able to sustainably generate high returns on their equity, and to wait for the wealth creation process to do its thing. 

Of course, while you are letting the years pass and while the business performs its wealth-creation miracle, the auction house will be open. On some days, the attendees will be jovial and full of optimism, paying insanely high prices for the ‘bank accounts’ being auctioned. At other times they will be depressed and despondent, only thinking the worst. 

Their moods however have nothing to do with the quality of that bank account that continues to earn 20 per cent per annum.  Their mood is instead influenced by exogenous factors such as whether Donald Trump will be re-elected, or whether China’s unemployment rate is rising or falling. These things affect the ‘price’ of the bank accounts being auctioned but they have nothing to do with their ‘value’ or worth.

Dollar Cost Averaging

The dollar cost averaging strategy is what I call a ‘contrarian’ strategy. It forces you to be less optimistic when others are very optimistic while ensuring you are more optimistic when others are despondent.

The idea is to be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy, to quote one of the world’s most famous and successful investors.

On days when the stock market falls because everyone at the auction house is frightened, you simply need to remind yourself of the long-term wealth creation process of business, and apply dollar cost averaging.

We begin by setting ourselves the goal of investing a fixed amount of money – say $1,000 – every month or every quarter in either a particular stock, a portfolio of stocks, an index fund, or an actively managed fund. No matter what the market throws at us, no matter how crazy the auction house becomes, we simply keep investing our $1,000 monthly or quarterly – whatever was decided.

If the unit price of the actively managed fund is $2.50, the $1,000 investment will buy 400 units. If the unit price falls to $2.00, the next $1,000 investment will buy 500 units. And when sentiment in the auction house is overly optimistic and the unit price is $5.00, the $1,000 investment will buy only 200 units. With dollar cost averaging, more units are acquired at cheaper prices than at expensive prices but the strategy is always acquiring more units.

One benefit of the strategy is it helps the investor avoid being paralysed by fear. This can happen if an initial investment is made at $5.00 and then the unit price falls to $2.50. Many investors listen to the noise surrounding the events that caused the price drop rather than taking advantage of it. Instead of adding to their investment, they forget the long-term wealth creation process of business growth and run for the hills. The stock market is one of the few markets where shoppers zip up their wallets and run for the hills when the items are ‘On Sale’.

Some investors who buy at $5.00, panic when the price falls to $2.50. Being unable to bear the losses anymore, and fearing even greater losses, they sell at $2.50. When the market eventually recovers – it usually does – they miss out on the recovery. Other investors who buy at $5.00 are also petrified but do nothing when the price falls to $2.50. They simply wait until the prices recover.  The problem with this strategy is that they have lost through the time value of money and they’ve not taken advantage of the opportunity to generate a profit from the recovery.

Dollar cost averaging seeks to mitigate the opportunity cost associated with doing nothing.

Let’s look at a ten-month period during which one thousand dollars is invested in a fund monthly, and the unit price of that fund falls from $10.00 to $4.00 and then rises back to $10.00.

Table 1.  Dollar-Cost Averaging example.

Dollar Cost Averaging Example

If all $10,000 was invested at the beginning of the period, the value at the end of the period would be $10,000. And if all the funds ($10,000) were invested at the end of the period, the value would again be $10,000.

Because the investor took advantage of the auction house’s depressed sentiment during the period using the dollar cost averaging strategy, additional units were purchased while the units were at low prices. The $10,000 invested is worth over $17,000 at the end of the period because the average purchase price was $5.88 per unit and the units ended the period at $10.00.

Of course, it’s not always peaches and cream. If the unit prices had risen first and then fallen back to the starting price, the investor would have less value than investing the funds all at the beginning or at the end because they purchased additional units at higher prices.

But the end of the 10-month period doesn’t represent the end of the experience. As we demonstrated earlier, the process of business wealth creation takes years. Ten months is too short a time frame to consider the strategy a success or otherwise. 

Provided the investor has picked a portfolio of select quality companies whose earnings march upwards over the years, or a fund manager that invests with discipline in such companies, the long-term value of the shares or units will rise, and so will the portfolio’s value.

Applying it to the real world

Figure 1.  Performance of The Montgomery Small Companies Fund

Performance of the Montgomery Small Companies FundSource: Fundhost

I examined the outcome of investing $10,000 each quarter, since inception, in the Montgomery Small Companies Fund (the Fund) with the objective of comparing it to an initial investment of the same total amount as that which was invested through dollar cost averaging.

It’s an unfair comparison because the unit mid-price of the Fund at the time of writing is $1.223 versus the unit price at inception of $1.00. Moreover, the unit price has not spent a great deal of time below the $1.00 unit price at inception, which means there haven’t been a huge number of opportunities to acquire more units at prices below the inception price.

I have also ignored distributions. They are neither included in returns nor reinvested. The returns from investing all at inception or via a dollar cost averaging strategy would be even better than those described here.

Nevertheless, it remains an instructive exercise, especially for those who might be more nervous about investing and those who might fear the effects of recessions, war, inflation, and other exogenous factors on the performance of the stock market.

Keep in mind the period begins on 20 September 2019. The Fund was launched just a few months before COVID-19 hit. If you were ever going to have to endure an event that justified your fears about investing at the wrong time, it would be COVID-19. 

Table 2.  Dollar Cost Averaging $10,000 into the Montgomery Small Companies Fund quarterly.

Dollar Cost Averaging $10,000 into the Montgomery Small Companies Fund quarterly.

Given there were only two quarterly investment dates from 16 where the unit price was below the initial unit price at inception and that the unit price at the end of the period is higher than at the beginning, it is a reasonable assumption that investing all at the beginning will produce a better outcome than dollar cost averaging. Gary and Dom are doing too good a job managing the Fund for dollar cost averaging to be superior.

And that is evident in the results. Investing $10,000 each quarter resulted in an investment of $160,000 and the acquisition of 141,474.6 units for an average price of $1.13, clearly higher than the initial price of $1.00. 

Had you invested $160,000 at the inception price of $1.00, the value today would be $195,696. The dollar cost averaging strategy resulted in $160,000 invested, which at the 20 September 2023 unit price of $1.2231, is now worth $173,037.

As I mentioned, it is an unfair comparison. And hindsight plays a big part. Because I am assessing the strategies today, I am comparing 16 investments of $10,000 with the same total amount at inception. I couldn’t have known at inception that investing $160,000 would be the appropriate amount to invest. I might have invested much less or much more. 

The exercise, however, does demonstrate that a dollar-cost averaging strategy can ensure disciplined habits while also securing attractive long-term returns (provided the manager continues to do a good job) even if serious market setbacks have to be endured. 

Obviously, it’s easy to look back at these things after the market has come roaring back.

Indeed, it is the ever-present possibility of market setbacks that renders the dollar cost averaging approach a comfortable strategy for navigating those adverse episodes in markets. Dollar cost averaging ensures more units are purchased as the market or the fund declines and aids a more rapid recovery as markets return to confidence. Down markets are a wonderful time to be long-term bullish.

Of course, if you have justifiable confidence in the manager’s ability to create wealth over the long term, then maximising an investment initially is the way to go. The caveat is that we just don’t know what could happen in between. 

Portfolio Performance is calculated after fees and costs, including the investment management fee and performance fee, but excludes the buy/sell spread. All returns are on a pre-tax basis. This report was prepared by Montgomery Lucent Investment Management Pty Limited, (ABN 58 635 052 176, Authorised Representative No. 001277163) (Montgomery) the investment manager of the Montgomery Small Companies Fund. The responsible entity of the Fund is Fundhost Limited (ABN 69 092 517 087) (AFSL No: 233 045) (Fundhost). This document has been prepared for the purpose of providing general information, without taking account your particular objectives, financial circumstances or needs. You should obtain and consider a copy of the Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) relating to the Fund before making a decision to invest. The PDS and Target Market Determination (TMD) are available here: https://fundhost.com.au/fund/montgomery-small-companies-fund/ While the information in this document has been prepared with all reasonable care, neither Fundhost nor Montgomery makes any representation or warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of any statement in this document including any forecasts. Neither Fundhost nor Montgomery guarantees the performance of the Fund or the repayment of any investor’s capital. To the extent permitted by law, neither Fundhost nor Montgomery, including their employees, consultants, advisers, officers or authorised representatives, are liable for any loss or damage arising as a result of reliance placed on the contents of this document. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.

Read More

Continue Reading

Trending