Experienced investors know that the critical path to realising your investment goals is to stick to the plan, ignore the noise in the media, and keep things simple. This is not an easy thing to do in the best of times, least of all when people all around us continue to succumb to this terrible virus. Being overly optimistic can lead to terrible investment decisions just as much as being deeply negative can.
Even pure data can be misleading, especially in the short term, as we can see markets reacting to readings like inflation numbers and a (previously) stronger rand. Looking through, we can see that inflation is most likely transitory, and the stronger rand levels we saw in the first half of the year were unsustainable. However, news like this moves the markets anyways, and sometimes positioning for the future hurts in the short term.
Maintaining a long-term strategic asset allocation while distinguishing investment opportunity from hollow hype has been our focus. While we are not oblivious to the noise in the market, when we step back and assess our positioning, we affirm our conviction that this is still a risk-on environment with many tailwinds for equities, particularly in China, technology, innovation and resources.