Seeing Past the Coronavirus Shock

I am most anxious not to inundate you with information during the Coronavirus outbreak but I feel sure the occasional update will be well received. It is my intention to provide such updates each week as the situation develops, for the time being.
The following is a blog post from yesterday by Alistair Meadows of EBI Investments Ltd. It is EBI who construct our investment portfolios.

“As unexpected shocks go, Coronavirus ranks in the very top tier of events capable of disconcerting investors, amongst the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) and Black Monday. Whilst news continues to horrify many investors with the human and economic implications, buried in the latest data in what statisticians refer to as “the inflection point of a logistics curve”, is a sign that the very worst may be over.

February news was dominated by the global spread and impact of the Coronavirus (Covid-19). Dow Jones, S&P 500 and the FTSE All-Share fell by over 14%, 12% and 11%. So far in March (16th March 2020), these Index markets have been continuing their decline and the correction has now developed into a full-scale bear market.

The first wave of market declines was influenced by two drivers: The world supply chain being compromised and the closure of much of China’s businesses. China is responsible for approximately 16% of World GDP and 35% of World GDP Growth.

Commodities (raw materials; sugar, rice etc) have also felt the impact of the virus. Unsurprisingly, the impact is increased when looking at the products China heavily consumes. Raw materials price declines have a shockwave effect to export dependent countries; Brazil, Chile and Peru have high export trade as a proportion of their GDP (approximately 29%, 59% and 49% respectively). All will be feeling the pinch.

The second wave has been primarily driven by one factor; failure to contain the virus globally, leading to the coronavirus being declared a pandemic by WHO (World Health Organisation), with Europe now as its epicentre.

The severity within Europe has caused some countries to shut down, imposing country-wide lockdowns, border closures and curfews to control the virus. Countries like Italy, Spain and Germany now have more active cases of the coronavirus than China.

As coronavirus spread to North America, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates to zero and launched a $700bn stimulus programme in a bid to protect the economy from the effects of coronavirus.

The consensus for the short run is that the situation is most likely going to get worse before it gets any better. The credit rating agency Standard and Poor (S&P) stated "The initial data from China suggests that its economy was hit far harder than projected, though a tentative stabilisation has begun…Europe and the United States are following a similar path, as increasing restrictions on person-to-person contacts presage a demand collapse that will take activity sharply lower in the second quarter before a recovery begins later in the year."

Nevertheless, amongst the bad times of late around the globe there are now some positives. The high levels of quarantine measures taken in China are easing and the President is urging China’s inactive workforce to now return to work. Additionally, the realisation that global slowdown in supplies hasn’t affected domestic consumer prices yet, which is a positive. China’s experience serves a model of how the rest of the world can control coronavirus, locking down and quarantining huge sections and building hospitals to increase capacity appears to be working.

In addition, new academic analysis of the infections data suggests that for Italy, the shape of the graph’s curve of is forming what statisticians refer to a logistics or “S” shaped curve, changing the shape away from the exponential “J” shaped curve so the current state forms an inflection point. This demonstrates the success of the lockdown model.

Source: http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/

We are also now universally seeing all countries taking drastic measures to help stop the spread of coronavirus and providing economic stimulus to help the economy deal with the effects of the outbreak, for example, the US and the UK have provided emergency rate cuts and countries are starting to provide economic stimulus.

As hard as it may seem, fear and panic should not be allowed to drive investment decisions. In general, it’s good to remember that any losses incurred are only realised if you sell. The idea that markets go up and down and don’t show a continuous level of performance is no surprise.

Remember, EBI Portfolios’ all-weather investment philosophy offers a long-term investment solution suitable for any market regime or circumstances, so it should be no surprise we are focusing on the long term. Unless you believe that capitalism will be brought down by a virus, this most likely is just another bout of selling that will lead to buying again.

Please note that the value of investments and the income derived from them may fall and you may get back less than you invested. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.”

As always, if you have any questions concerning this e-mail or any other finance related matter, please do feel to contact me at any time.

With kind regards,

Yours sincerely

Graham Ponting CFP Chartered MCSI

Managing Partner

Clearwater Remote Working

In accordance with Government guidelines and in the interests of our team and clients, we have decided to operate a ‘work from home’ policy, until Government advice changes. An obvious implication of this is that we will not be able to hold client meetings at our offices for the time being. However, Adam, Kim and I remain committed to providing the highest level of customer care and we have every confidence that this can be maintained, even though we will be working remotely.

Please note the following:

1. We will be observing normal office hours – 09:00 to 17:00. However, I am likely to see e-mails outside of these times, if you have an urgent query.

2. If you need to call us, please use the usual office telephone no. 01494 717000. If, for any reason you are unable to get through at the first attempt, please leave a message (or send an e-mail) and someone will get back to you as soon as possible.

3. Our preferred method of communication throughout this period will be by e-mail. As we will be working remotely, it would be helpful if you could copy all 3 of us in on any communications, our respective e-mail addresses are below:
   graham@clearwaterwealth.co.uk
   adam@clearwaterwealth.co.uk
   kim@clearwaterwealth.co.uk

4. It should be possible for us to arrange a video meeting, if this would be helpful. Please just call in the first instance, so that we can agree a mutually convenient date and time.

I have been in discussion with our platform providers (Transact and Standard Life), their business continuity systems are robust and your access to their websites will not be affected. We do not expect work standards and timeframes to change throughout this difficult period but if you do experience any undue delays, please notify us immediately and we will do everything we can to rectify the situation.

These are unprecedented times but please rest assured we will continue to provide any help or guidance we can throughout.

As always, if you have any questions concerning this e-mail or any other finance related matter, please do feel to contact me at any time.

With kind regards,

Yours sincerely

Graham Ponting CFP Chartered MCSI

Managing Partner

Clearwater Portfolio Update

I know many of you will be more than a little concerned about the fast developing coronavirus situation, not just from a health perspective but also from the point of view, how is market turbulence affecting your investments?

Probably the best way to answer this question is to take a look at the following 2 charts:

This first chart shows how our lowest risk portfolio (EBI UK Bond) has performed since 1st January when compared with our highest risk portfolio (EBI UK 100). The dramatic difference in fortunes is plain to see, with the Bond portfolio actually increasing through most of this coronavirus scare (well, so far at least).

We will look at a wider range of the portfolios below but please remember each portfolio contains an element of the Bond portfolio and the 100 portfolio. As an example, EBI UK 60 is essentially 60% of the 100 portfolio, blended with 40% of the Bond portfolio, and so on.

This second chart shows how a higher exposure to Bonds has cushioned some of the portfolios from recent falls.

My advice remains resolutely that, unless our clients are in dire need of funds, they should attempt to ride out what is likely to be a painful but temporary downturn and NOT to disinvest at this time. However, if you feel you have no alternative, it will be possible to take money just from the Bond element of the portfolios, thus not selling equities (shares) when it is clearly not sensible to do so. This will change the balance of what remains in the portfolio to higher risk but this can be addressed by a ‘rebalance’ when markets recover.

If this is something you feel you need to do, please contact Adam and he will advise you how to go about this.

Serious though this situation undoubtedly is, now is the time to put on one’s tin hat and hide behind the sofa, until things improve.

As always, if you have any questions concerning this e-mail or any other finance related matter, please do feel to contact me at any time.

With kind regards,

Yours sincerely

Graham Ponting CFP Chartered MCSI

Managing Partner

Update on today’s stock market falls

I received the following this morning from Tatton Investment Management on the sharp falls in stock markets today and I thought you might find it interesting. For once, it’s not all about Coronavirus!

“While most people spent the weekend dealing with the prospect of the COVID-19 epidemic taking hold of UK life, the financial community woke up this morning to another, different – even if slightly more familiar – type of upset: an oil price shock that unfolded over the weekend.

Oil prices have plunged by more than 30% since last week. Together with recent declines, this means that the price of oil has more than halved since the beginning of the year. At the same time, a flight to the perceived safety of government bonds has pushed up bond prices, leading to the lowest yields ever seen on US Treasuries as a result of the inverse relationship between bond prices and their yields.

As a consequence of the double whammy, the already highly nervous stock markets have reacted with what can only be described as panic selling. After falls of around 5% in Asia, European stock markets are opening down by at least as much and in some cases more.

Altogether this news flow will lead many to feel slightly apocalyptic – or at least as anxious as they might have during the darkest days of the financial crisis back in 2008/2009.

But pause for a moment and it becomes clear that this oil price collapse is a total reverse of the most significant oil crisis that took place in the 1970s. This time around, the Saudis decided to push the oil price down, not up, and falling yields take pressures off borrowers, rather than increase it.

This is very different territory compared to previous oil price shocks. So, what is going on?

Following the already significant declines in the oil price since the beginning of the year, there had been widespread expectations that OPEC (plus Russia) would agree to production cuts to stabilise the oil price. It therefore came as a shock to oil traders and their positioning towards rising prices when the opposite outcome occurred over the weekend. Essentially, this means that Saudi Arabia and Russia opted for a resumption of the price war of 2015/2016. Just as now, this strategy was aimed at decimating the competition of US shale oil and gas producers, which require a higher oil price threshold than Saudi and Russia to remain profitable. Just as Trump pursued a strategy of ‘kick ‘em when they are down’ with China last year, it appears the same tactic is now being applied to US oil producers.

Given that the shale producer defaults and the resulting stress in credit markets caused a stock market correction back in Q1 2016, it is not overly surprising that capital markets are following the same script now. Is it likely then that history repeats itself and we are about to witness an even bigger crash than 2016, due to the double whammy of Coronavirus disruptions and oil market upset?

Well, that’s possible in the very short term, but the overall financial, political and economic environment is a different one compared to four years ago. First and foremost, a repeat of the oil price war tactics from back then will no longer carry the same surprise factor. We can expect a much better-informed reaction by the US central bank and government to this renewed onslaught.

Back then, the biggest issue was that mass defaults across the US oil industry would increase the yield costs of corporate credit for all US businesses. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect the Fed will react very quickly to minimise this risk and use its immense quantitative easing (QE) firepower to sell US government and mortgage bond holdings and buy corporate credit to counter any selling pressures. This would also have the effect of easing any ‘flight to safety’ induced supply shortages within government bond markets.

What is more, neither commodity markets nor commodity producers are coming from bubble territory as they did four years ago. This time, there is unlikely to be a similar demand decline from resource industries for manufactured goods, which have already been forced to scale back expansion plans. On the other hand, a halving of the oil price, together with a significant reduction in the cost of borrowing, constitutes a significant stimulus for the global economy and in particular emerging markets, which will additionally benefit from an accompanying fall in the US$.

Our take on this morning’s stock market rout is that faced with this shock surprise action by oil exporters, market participants have become overwhelmed by a doubling up of concerns from the virus disruptions and memories of what happened the last time when oil prices traded at these levels.

We expect some decisive actions from central banks, or at least announcements in this direction. Such actions are unlikely to amount to another round of monetary QE from the Fed, but rather a swapping of government bonds already on its balance sheets with direct purchases of corporate bonds, given that the big falls in government yields from the increased demand in bonds allows them to take supportive action without pushing up yield levels. The Fed has the means to put out this specific fear driven ’fire’, while the economic stimulus effect from the lower cost of energy and of capital should prove to be a very welcome relief over the coming months for the virus disrupted global economy.

At the end of a tumultuous time for stock markets last week, the US stock market rallied hard into the close, leading to a slight weekly gain in those markets overall. This week may well prove similar as there are many more seasoned investors sitting on vast amounts of uninvested cash following years of overextended prices for risk assets.

Perhaps it is worth mentioning that due to unattractively high valuation levels, Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway fund was at the beginning of the year sitting on uninvested cash of around £130billion. As Warren Buffett is fond of saying: “Price is what you pay; value is what you get. Whether we’re talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.”

As always, if you have any questions concerning this e-mail or any other finance related matter, please do feel to contact me at any time.

With kind regards,

Yours sincerely

Graham Ponting CFP Chartered MCSI

Managing Partner

It’s that time of the year again!

As we approach the end of the 2019/20 tax-year, thoughts inevitably turn to end of year tax planning and any unused allowances (ISA, Pensions etc.) that may be available.

The ISA allowance for 2019/20 is £20,000 and if you have not made a subscription (or perhaps you have only made a part subscription), there is still time to use this allowance, if you have the funds available.

Since 6th April 2016, in addition to the subscription, it has been possible to top-up ISAs by any amounts withdrawn during the tax-year, including any charges deducted. This means that even if you have not made a subscription this year but have ISAs from previous years, your personal ISA Allowance may be more than £20,000 because of charges deducted during the year. If you made a subscription at the beginning of the tax-year, you may still have a residual allowance left because of these deductions which can be utilised by 5th April 2020.

If you have a Standard Life Wrap Account, the scope for top-up (in addition to any unused subscription) does not apply, unless you take physical withdrawals from your ISA. This is because Standard Life deduct ISA charges from the cash held in your Portfolio and not from the ISA itself.

If you have a Transact Wrap Account and you would like to know your personal ISA allowance for the remainder of the 2019/20 tax year, you can access this information on the Transact website. From your home page, select reports and from the drop-down menu, select ISA Subscriptions.

If you would like to use the balance of your allowance before 5th April, please ensure you advise us of your intentions before the end of March; we will be very pleased to assist. If your ISA is with Transact, please give us as much notice as possible, as a form may be required, if you have not made a subscription since Tax year 2018/19.

Just for information, the ISA Allowance for 2020/21 is likely to remain £20,000 each, so £40,000 per couple.

If you have any concerns or questions about the above or indeed any other finance related matter, please do not hesitate to call me at any time.

With best wishes,

Yours sincerely

Graham Ponting CFP Chartered MCSI

Managing Partner

What to do?

1. DON’T look at the markets, market commentaries or your portfolio’s value. The only effect will be to tempt one to do something- and that “something” will almost certainly be the wrong thing.

2. The more bearish investors become, the more they sell short both markets and individual shares. So far, attempts to “buy the dip” have failed, but once a critical level of short positions are established, (or the news is not as apocalyptic as is currently supposed), there will be few sellers left, leading to a scramble to buy back, thus causing a sharp price rise and a re-establishment of the demand/supply balance. Market complacency is being challenged in the only way it can be- by maximising trade volumes, which in this instance means “forcing” investors to sell, via sharp declines in price.

3. (Re)-examine your risk tolerances. It is easy to get over-confident (and thus over-exposed) when prices seemingly rise effortlessly. This should be an opportunity to check that your market risks are still aligned with your ability and willingness to take those risks. That should be the only reason to act (and even then, selling now may not be the optimum response).

4. Focus on the long term. Unless you believe that capitalism will be brought down by a virus, this is just another bout of selling that will lead to buying again, as investors recognise that they have (once again!) over-reacted. Since January 21st, when concerns over the virus first got started, the Shanghai Composite Index has out-performed both the S&P 500 and the German Dax Index- China is supposed to be the epicentre of this crisis!

5. Things have a way of working out on their own - Bernie Sanders IS a genuine socialist and WOULD be a disaster for both markets and the economy across the world, but betting money appears to be far more sanguine. It seems that the higher the odds of Bernie’s nomination get, the more likely it is that Trump will win…

AND a final thought. Arguably the world’s most successful investor (certainly most well-known), Warren Buffet, was reported to have been down $340 million in March 2009, following the financial crisis but lost nothing, because he didn’t sell!  

As always, if you have any questions concerning this e-mail or any other finance related matter, please do feel to contact me at any time.

With kind regards,

Yours sincerely

Graham Ponting CFP Chartered MCSI

Managing Partner

Coronavirus – Update

Since my last blog on this subject on 3rd February, things have moved along quickly and it is now looking increasingly unlikely that the spread of COVID-19 will be easily contained. The increasing numbers of cases outside of China is a concern, it is one thing to largely isolate a population in a Communist State like China, quite another to try and achieve the same thing in the free West!

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has not classified this as a pandemic yet but it may only be a matter of time.  

Stock markets seemed quite slow to react at first but they now appear to be in full flight, at one point this afternoon the FTSE 100 was down another 4.0%, after heavy falls earlier in the week.

Despite these falls and with possibly more bad news to come, the fundamentals of long-term investing have not changed and nor are they likely to.

The following is an extract taken from my earlier e-mail because the points remain relevant, even though the situation has deteriorated since then.

How is this likely to affect markets going forward?

We don’t know for certain. In previous outbreaks (such as SARS), economic damage wasn’t really caused by the primary effect of the disease (people getting sick & dying) but by the secondary effects of the fear of the disease (people hunkering down and not travelling, shopping, interacting with other people, all of which affects company profits and economic growth). Given China is such a strong engine for global growth and the virus is centred there, the secondary effects are particularly worrying. SARS managed to knock 2% off China’s economic growth in Q2 2003 so it’s likely that the virus will have a measurable effect on global growth in 2020, although any dip is likely to be temporary, as long as the disease is contained.

As for markets, in previous outbreaks like SARS, the market sold-off sharply but then bounced back even more strongly once the outbreak started to peter out. Selling out of the market is thus risky, as it risks locking in losses but not being present for the rebound.

Every outbreak over the last 100 years has been contained and so has had little effect on the market, so the virus petering out remains overwhelmingly the most likely prospect here. But it’s impossible to completely rule out the incredibly serious tail risk of a global pandemic. This should definitely concern us, but careful action such as that being taken by the WHO and global governments is the correct response, rather than panic.

We may have more weeks and months of this uncertainty ahead of us but, as stated above, to sell out of the market now when much damage has already been done could leave you exposed if a ‘V’ shaped recovery materialises.

As has always been the case in the past, the best thing to do when faced with market uncertainty and sharp falls such as these, is nothing, no matter how hard or counter intuitive that might seem just now. The only exception to this would be if you were in dire need of funds and had absolutely no alternative but to liquidate investments.  

As always, if you have any questions concerning this e-mail or any other finance related matter, please do feel to contact me at any time.

With kind regards,

Yours sincerely

Graham Ponting CFP Chartered MCSI

Managing Partner

Would investing £100 per month in Premium Bonds give a better return than a diversified portfolio?

You probably already know the answer to this question but some figures I have seen today from the Motley Fool website make for interesting reading.

Premium Bonds, which are issued by National Savings & Investments (NS&I), cost £1 each. They do not pay any interest. Instead, each eligible bond is entered into a monthly draw for prizes ranging from £25 to £1m. However, the odds of any bond winning a prize are 24,500 to 1. Given the fact that Brits have invested over £84bn in Premium Bonds, those odds do not appear to matter to them.

It is true that the more bonds a person owns, the higher the chance of a prize. Also, the UK Treasury backs any savings and prizes won, so an investor will never get back less than they put in. Additionally, Premium Bond prizes are entirely tax-free. But what kind of returns can an investor in Premium Bonds expect?

Tried and tested

Let’s look at how a £100 per month Premium bond investment, over 25 years, is likely to perform. First, we need probabilities of winning each of the monthly prizes available, and the chance of winning nothing. The required data for calculating these is available on the prize draw details section of the NS&I website.

We will start with 100 bonds that go into the monthly draw. Any prizes won will be used to buy more bonds, and another 100 bonds are purchased each month. There is a limit of 50,000 eligible bonds – anything over this amount is ineligible for the prize draws, and we will do the same in our study.

Ten thousand trials of this experiment are enough to generate some expectations. On average, the wealth level at the end of 25 years was £36,040. 10% of the trials generated a wealth level of £36,625 or higher. 1% of trials resulted in netting £40,950 or more. The truly lucky, the 0.1% club, could expect their investment to grow to £91,825 or more, with one (0.01% of trials) sitting on £1,036,150.

99% of the time, investing £100 per month for 25 years in Premium Bonds will generate £40,950 or less. An investor can do better than this is they find an investment that returns 2.43% each year on average.

Premium returns

The good news is that there are investments out there that have long-term average returns that do indeed beat 2.43%.

EBIP 100, our highest risk portfolio, had an average annual return of 7.74% over the last 25 years, more than 3 x as much; the end value would have been £87,927.49, as evidenced by the chart below.

EBIP 60, our most commonly used portfolio for medium risk investors, had an average annual return of 6.73% over the last 25 years; the end value would have been £75,640, see chart below. 

It is important to note that we are not exactly comparing apples with apples here, there are risks with investing in diversified portfolios, you could get back less than you put in, which is of course not the case with Premium Bonds. However, I don’t believe it is controversial to say you are more likely to end up with more wealth if you invest for the long term in a diversified portfolio, compared to investing in Premium Bonds.

The most interesting thing that I take from the chart is the relative lack of volatility of even the highest risk portfolio, brought about by dripping in small amounts regularly and therefore taking advantage of (rather than being disadvantaged by) dips in the markets from time to time.

All of the above having been said, if you are looking for an absolutely safe investment with a miniscule chance of striking it rich, then Premium Bonds might still be for you.   

I hope you find this piece interesting but if you have any questions concerning this e-mail or any other finance related matter, please do feel free to contact me at any time.

With kind regards,

Yours sincerely

Graham Ponting CFP Chartered MCSI

Managing Partner

Coronavirus - Update

The following is an article I received on Friday from Nic Spicer, Head of UK Investments for Portfoliometrix, given the subject matter, I thought you might find it of interest.

“Yesterday, 30 January, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) over the new coronavirus epidemic. The WHO flagged the risk of the coronavirus (so called because of its spiky, crown-like appearance under a microscope) spreading to countries outside of China with weaker health systems which have less ability to deal with it.

As of this morning (31 Jan), 9,692 cases of novel coronavirus (nCoV) had been confirmed worldwide with at least 82 of those outside China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau (including 2 cases in the UK). In addition, there are a further 15,238 suspected cases in China, suggesting the number of confirmed cases will continue to rise. Declaring a PHEIC is an important symbolic step which, in practical terms, makes it easier for the WHO to co-ordinate the responses of governments around the world.

Should we be worried?

We should be wary, but we shouldn’t panic. So far 213 people have died from the disease, a far cry from the roughly 400,000 deaths a year caused by flu. nCov is, however, more deadly than flu, with an estimated mortality rate of 2-3% vs flu’s less than 0.1%. Whilst serious, that 2-3% is lower than the roughly 10% mortality rate of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS (another coronavirus which killed 774 people in 2003) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome’s 34% mortality rate (a coronavirus outbreak that erupted in 2012). It is also certainly less than the 10-20% mortality rate of the last truly serious global pandemic, the 1918 Spanish Flu which infected about 500million and killed between 50 and 100 million.

What is troubling is that nCov is obviously quite contagious, about as much as flu, with each new case infecting on average about 2.5 other people, so it’s important that it is contained. This has been made more difficult in China because it emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan at a particularly unfortunate time, just before Chinese New Year which sees a mass migration of people back to their family homes to celebrate.

There are some important unanswered questions though which affect how easy it will be to contain, such as how long the virus incubates for and whether it can be passed along before symptoms show.

But there are only a few cases outside China, and, after a slow start, China itself has clamped down heavily on travel, as have other countries. Advances in medical science mean that the virus’s genetic makeup could be rapidly analysed and shared with laboratories around the world. That should help with containment and development of a vaccine. Cheap face masks probably aren’t that effective, but frequent hand washing (and not touching your face) is actually remarkably effective in terms of prevention (with the added advantage of helping prevent regular colds and flu, a far bigger risk to those outside China).

How is this affecting markets?

It’s difficult to completely disaggregate the causes of market moves, but fears about the virus have certainly been a large factor in the recent pullback in global equities. So far this is only a mild sell-off, but beneath the headline figures individual stock prices have moved more materially with defensive sectors (utilities, healthcare, tech, quality as a style in general) rallying, and more cyclical sectors (autos, resources, value as a style in general) as well as China-exposed travel and luxury goods retailers selling off.

This flight to safety has also been evident in bond markets, which have rallied strongly over January as fears have risen, and yields have fallen. This also briefly led to a US yield curve inversion on Thursday 30 Jan (10-year maturity minus 3 months maturity) - yield curve inversions over an extended period have historically been a reasonable indicator of recession, so they are closely monitored. 

How is this likely to affect markets going forward?

We don’t know for certain. In previous outbreaks (such as SARS), economic damage wasn’t really caused by the primary effect of the disease (people getting sick & dying) but by the secondary effects of the fear of the disease (people hunkering down and not travelling, shopping, interacting with other people, all of which affects company profits and economic growth). Given China is such a strong engine for global growth and the virus is centred there, the secondary effects are particularly worrying. SARS managed to knock 2% off China’s economic growth in Q2 2003 so it’s likely that the virus will have a measurable effect on global growth in 2020, although any dip is likely to be temporary, as long as the disease is contained.

As for markets, in previous outbreaks like SARS, the market sold-off sharply but then bounced back even more strongly once the outbreak started to peter out. Selling out of the market is thus risky as it risks locking in losses but not being present for the rebound.

Every outbreak over the last 100 years has been contained and so has had little effect on the market, so the virus petering out remains the overwhelmingly the most likely prospect here. But it’s impossible to completely rule out the incredibly serious tail risk of a global pandemic. This should definitely concern us, but careful action such as that being taken by the WHO and global governments is the correct response, rather than panic.

How is this affecting PortfolioMetrix portfolios?

Coronavirus is a classic ‘black swan’ – an unexpected but high impact event. But the PortfolioMetrix portfolios are diversified precisely because although we don’t know about specific black swans in advance (or when they’ll occur) we have always believed that it’s best to prepare for them in advance by building robust portfolios, rather than trying to react after the fact.

It is likely, however, that portfolios will be volatile for the next few weeks as we learn more about how serious this strain of coronavirus actually is. We are not planning any knee-jerk reactions (which risk missing out on a rebound) but we are monitoring the situation closely.”

Like Nic’s PortfolioMetrix Portfolios, all Portfolios recommended by Clearwater are very highly diversified but as above, this doesn’t mean that we won’t see some volatility over the coming weeks. As always, the advice I would give is that unless you ‘need’ to cash in investments at this time, the best policy is likely to be to wait this out.  

If you have any questions concerning this e-mail or any other finance related matter, please do feel to contact me at any time.

With kind regards,

Yours sincerely

Graham Ponting CFP Chartered MCSI

Managing Partner

A transformed investor’s view of market volatility

The following is a short piece written by Dave Goetsch, Executive Producer of the Big-Bang Theory, a hugely popular US TV series. If you’ve not heard of it, ask your children, they will tell you it’s massive!

The article was written in 2018 but its message is always pertinent. A couple of very important sentences have been highlighted.

“Seeing all the recent headlines about the sudden downturn in the stock market has transported me back to February of 2009, when I was close to despair. It’s striking how different I feel now. 

In February 2009, the stock market was down around 50% from its high, and everyone seemed to feel like the sky was falling. I was familiar with this state of panic because my relationship to the financial markets was that I didn’t trust them. 

They were always going up and down in ways no one could predict, and I couldn’t trust those folks who said that they could anticipate what was going to happen. So when the market went down, I went down with it—sinking into a depression, knowing there was nothing I could do. What a difference nine years make. I haven’t changed because the stock market rebounded. I changed because I learned that there was a different way to think about investing. I was right not to trust those people who thought they could predict what was going to happen in the markets, but I was wrong in thinking that there was nothing to do. I’ve learned that I can have a great investment experience if I just accept a few simple truths.

I have to understand the uncertainty of the market. The stock market, as measured by the S&P 500 Index, has returned about 10% per year over the last 90 years, (1) but there are very few individual years in which it has ever actually returned that amount. In fact, how many of those 90 years do you think the S&P 500 was up more than 20% or down more than 20% for that year? The answer is 40. Astounding, right? I wish somebody had explained that to me decades ago. Then I would have known to look at stock market returns in terms of decades—not years, months, days, or hours. I would understand that so many of those articles and cable news pieces are just noise, designed to keep an audience obsessed and unsettled.

In order to be a long-term investor, you have to have a long-time horizon. This can be hard to remember when you’re being assaulted by noise, but if you can stay strong, the results are stunning. By results, I don’t mean the investment returns, which hopefully are good. The return I’m talking about is how I feel every day. I worry less—not just about the future, but also about the present. Of course, I know that there are no guarantees when it comes to investing, but I feel like I’m going to be okay. I have a plan. 

There’s no way I could’ve done this without a financial advisor. I needed someone who could not just talk me through what my asset allocation should be, but also help me work through how I felt about investing and what exactly I could do to change my perspective. 

I was a mess nine years ago. Now, my outlook is totally different. The markets haven’t changed; they still go up and down. The difference is, I don’t anymore.”

FOOTNOTES

(1) 1S&P data © 2018 S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC, a division of S&P Global. All rights reserved. 

If you have any questions concerning this e-mail or any other finance related matter, please do feel to contact me at any time.

With kind regards,

Yours sincerely

Graham Ponting CFP Chartered MCSI

Managing Partner