Trusting the Experts

Part of my sales pitch to people is that we are experts in the pet care industry. That we have years of experience and have seen a great many situations and dealt with them all. This morning I realized that I don’t always offer that same understanding and grace to others.

I was looking at my mother’s investments again and went down to the bottom of the list. There is one stock that sticks out more than others, Zoetis. It is a veterinary pharmaceutical company. It’s equity has been hammered this year and it annoys me, but sometimes patience it key. As I learned when I finally Googled the stock to see what the problem is.

It turns out that Zoetis had a bad rollout of a drug that ended up harming dogs more than helping them. That isn’t good but as long as the response was to pull the drug and go back to the drawing board then things like that are going to happen in business. We aren’t all perfect all the time, and , as I know well, in some industries those mistakes can bring outweighed levels of harm. Pharmaceuticals and veterinary medicine being two such industries.

Being in the animal care field I want to give a company that is trying to help animals the benefit of the doubt. It is my nature, and today I read an article that highlighted all the good Zoetis has done and that this is a minor setback in both their field and their stock.

My only issue is that the other company in the article listed as a great buy was United Healthcare and one of my prime directives in managing this stock portfolio is to avoid evil. This does give me pause on Zoetis, and begs the question do they care about the pet’s well being or their bottom line?

And here is where I need to trust the experts. I expect my clients to trust me so all I can do is trust others. We work with a financial advisor at one institution and they have my mother’s stocks in a brokerage company that appears to know what they are doing. They bought Zoetis because it was in a pullback and unfortunately it has continued to pullback, but hopefully that will turn, and their next release will not have a bad rollout and will help improve the lives of pets and pet parents.