I’ve always believed that we are in the business of life. Your life. Your life is our life. We are committed to this. It is engrained in the Bedell Frazier culture.
Life is about lessons. It’s about experiences and accomplishments. It comes with highs and lows, trial and error, success and failure. The key is to learn from mistakes. Do you ever fail if you don’t give up? I believe not. A person who never made a mistake, never tried anything new. Albert Einstein said that. He was pretty smart. I believe that.
With all of the turmoil around the world, I wanted to highlight some positives that deserve emphasis this week. The Winter Olympic games conclude this weekend. These games in PyeongChang took on greater significance considering the increased tensions along the Korean peninsula. Tensions thawed a bit, but unfortunately it seems temporary. Let’s hope positive developments gain some momentum. There’s a lot of anger and mistrust around the world. That’s not new. I love competition and the beauty of the Olympics is the spirit of the games at the global level. Geopolitics take a backseat and the good in the world is captured in a global lens. The United States has competed admirably throughout the 2-week event. Shaun White, Mikaela Shiffrin and Chloe Kim are bringing home 3 of the 8 American Gold Medals. The Women’s Hockey Team took Gold with an emotional upset of Team Canada. It’s so great to see what big things can be achieved when a group comes together and works so hard with a purpose. The games didn’t quite go the way Lindsey Vonn hoped. She put out a heroic effort after so much adversity to get back to this stage. She’s a winner. She doesn’t give up. The American spirit lives.
Back on the west coast, a group of 12 and under girls rose to unexpected heights in a Water Polo tournament in Southern California. My daughters Sam and Nikki are among them. The last time they were at this pool, in August, they didn’t win a game. It was a new team and a new sport to them. They were intimidated and lacked confidence. But each game they got better. Their confidence grew. They returned in February as a new team and a positive attitude. This time, they didn’t lose. They finished in first place in the Gold Medal Bracket, beating the other undefeated team from Orange County. It was so fun and inspiring to watch these young ladies come together as a team, work hard and develop a special chemistry. It was an impressive accomplishment. They had so much fun doing it. There were so many life lessons at play. The American spirit is strong with them too.
The Market continues through this volatile, corrective phase. We see it continuing. We are focused and are still playing defense for now. I wanted to cover something different this week. I wanted to highlight these events. There is so much negativity that crowds the headlines these days. But there’s a lot of good going on too. It’s life. We’re in the business of life. Your life. Your life is our life. We are committed to this.
Have a nice weekend. We’ll be back, dark and early on Monday.
Mike
