Ellevest Co-Founder & CEO Sallie Krawcheck joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss post-election market volatility and how the pandemic has impacted women.
Video Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]– Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. Obviously as we’ve been discussing, all the market action this week with the market in the green, it’s playing out with still a lot of question marks hanging overhead. We’re still going to have to wait until January to see how the senate shakes out, here in those key races down in Georgia. It leaves a lot of questions to be answered, not just in terms of how the individual investor should be managing all this, but also how the recovery might impact personal finance as well.
Luckily for us, our next guest is joining us with the focus on both of those, as an expert. Sallie Krawcheck is the CEO and co-founder of Ellevest. And she joins us now. And Sallie, I appreciate you taking the time to chat with us today. I mean, you know, there’s a lot of question marks out there. I know you at Ellevest kind of put these portfolios together to embrace the volatility here. So talk to me about what investors should be thinking about as we move forward into 2021.
SALLIE KRAWCHECK: Well, you know, what we haven’t seen so far is what Trump had threatened with the election of Biden, that our 401(k)s would go to zero. You know, what we are seeing is the market this week, very much wants the COVID vaccine, wants to get back to normal. Goes up when there’s good news about the COVID vaccine. And I’d say overall, if we get to a split government with the senate still remaining Republican and the house being Democratic, a Democratic president, markets tend to like that, too. In fact, typically the equity market likes to go up, it likes growth. And so a sort of calmer environment is a good one for the markets.
– Yeah, calmer market, or calmer environment certainly good. But, you know, I have to wonder– something we haven’t really talked too much with our guests about is this, what is expected to be this bumpy transition? It does feel like investors have really looked past the inauguration in January, sort of this expectation of Joe Biden being the president. He is the president-elect.
I’m just curious on a personal level, how you’ve been watching sort of this back and forth play out of this transition. And if there should be any concerns investors should be looking to, because it may not be a smooth handover?
SALLIE KRAWCHECK: Well, you know, I don’t see any indication that democracy is going to fail. As President-elect Biden said, there are ways to get trespassers out of the White House. What I’m really looking to into next year is the economic recovery and how quickly that is and how inclusive that is. The thing that we– you know, I am thinking about all the time and I think all of us should be thinking about all the time– is the negative impact to women during this coronavirus.
We just saw in September, 865,000 women leave the workforce as children went back to work. And you know, if we want to look to get economic growth going, getting those women back into the workforce is going to be important and key.
– So let’s talk about that, because there have been a lot of concerns for women who have been juggling sort of work from home as well as trying to help their kids learn from home. I know you’ve looked into that very closely. How much support do you think is needed from potentially the companies, for example? I know a lot of companies who’ve said, look, we will offer extra money for childcare. How much of the onus is on the companies in order to maintain or be able to keep these women in the workforce?
SALLIE KRAWCHECK: Well, look, it’s the companies and women. I read a quote yesterday that I am going to be saying for the rest of my life, because I think it’s so spot on. Which is, “other countries have social safety nets, and the United States of America has women.” A sociologist the name of Jessica Calarco said that. And so I think it’s– what should the onus be on companies, and what should it be on the government as well? That we are the richest country in the history of the world and we don’t have affordable child care, we don’t have paid sick and family leave for everyone universally, is really, frankly, pretty outrageous.
And that we then– you know, so when we go through periods of time like this, it’s women, it’s marginalized groups, it’s minorities that tend to get hit. And there was a– there was a headline on one of the Bloomberg articles that said that women are facing decades– getting pushed back decades of economic progress and financial progress. This is a really, really important issue.
– Yeah, when you think about getting pushed back and kind of the lasting impacts of this, we’re seeing that play out now. You mentioned minorities still suffering with relatively higher unemployment rates there. When we think about that on the personal finance front, I mean, what’s kind of– it’s obviously tough to give advice out of a recession, ’cause clearly the impacts are long lasting, but what is the right way to kind of be navigating all this, for people out there who are potentially facing layoffs, furloughs again, as we approach the winter months?
SALLIE KRAWCHECK: Yeah, look, it’s individual to everyone. And I think we’ve all got to– you know, people have gotta do what they’re able to do. If you’re fortunate enough to be able to invest, you know, really try to stay the course, because that has historically been the path to generating wealth and growing wealth. But for some folks, it’s about the day-to-day and, you know, getting the expenses down and in line, in order to try to navigate this as quickly as we can.
And for all of us, I think it’s about calling our congressional representatives and saying, we need more relief for families that are really hurting.
– I mean, to that point, we’re now going several months in without any kind of stimulus bill. We had a guest on earlier who said he doesn’t expect it until potentially January, when congress convenes under a new administration. What’s your biggest concern as you see these families struggling from month to month? In many states, that eviction moratorium certainly not in place anymore. I mean, there seems to be a huge wave that is coming here of poverty, of homelessness.
SALLIE KRAWCHECK: Well, and of mental illness as well, and of people feeling, you know, great despair. I think one conversation we’re really not having is the mental health aspect of this coronavirus pandemic overall. So we’re seeing a fraying of the very fabric of society. And if we take a big step back, you know, this wealth disparity, where again, and during the pandemic, the rich have gotten richer. The better off have gotten better off. Other folks have taken a hit backwards. You know, we’re– this is historically wide levels of wealth disparity. And it’s very difficult for– for a society to function with this kind of wealth disparity.
And you know, I think we can all recognize that some of the anger that we’re seeing– the election of Trump was very much a backlash against this. And so this doesn’t– you know, right now, this isn’t getting better. This is getting worse. And with– at a pretty rapid clip.
– Yeah, and we’ll see, I mean, how quickly that might go on for and whether or not some things can come through here on the stimulus side to help Americans weather that storm. But Sallie Krawcheck, CEO and co-founder of Ellevest, appreciate you taking the time to join.
SALLIE KRAWCHECK: Thank you, thanks for having me.
