THROUGHOUT  MODERN HISTORY, each passing decade has taken on its own defining characteristics: think the Swingin’ ’60s, and the Me Decade. As we reach the end of the first year of the 2020s, we already have a good idea of some of what the history books are going to say about this one. Barely a year in, the decade has already become synonymous with COVID-19, and its impact on the world around us. Every Zoom meeting and family dinner—even our upcoming virtual holiday reunions—contains some mention or reminder of how COVID-19 continues to define the year, the decade, and our everyday lives.

Thinking back to simpler times, I remember needing money for groceries during the Northeast blackout of 2003, and having no way to access it since all electronic systems were down. During those few days, anyone in my family who needed some cash to get by contacted my octogenarian grandmother, on her rotary phone, because we all knew that she had a proverbial mattress full of cash (a hefty real-life emergency fund outside of a bank account that she stowed away somewhere within her home, just in case). My grandmother was a product of her generation, having lived through the Great Depression in the 1930s, and with scars and habits formed by a distrust of the banking industry and the stock market. She was happy to help.

In this issue of The Analyst, we tackle two meaningful themes: the novel coronavirus, along with its impact on the markets, our lives, and our decision-making; and trust and ethics. The deeper we dive into these themes, the more we can see how they interconnect, simultaneously driving our lives and the decisions we make today and for the rest of our lives. We thoroughly cover COVID-19 and its impact on business and investing, in addition to providing valuable coping strategies to deal with pandemic-related stressors. We sharpen our ethical decision-making tools at the CFA Institute Ethics Learning Lab, get a thorough recap of the global issues covered at the 73rd
CFA Institute Annual (Virtual) Conference, and return to the basics with a piece on the role of common sense in investing. 

CFA Society Toronto itself was built in 1936 during the Great Depression, bringing financial professionals together to strive towards a common goal of building trust and ethics and improving the investment industry. The 2020s, likewise, will surely be
a defining decade for all of us.