To Buy Or Not To Buy?

Investors have never faced a pandemic and economic collapse at the same time. Peter Guy outlines the issues they must confront.

- Peter Guy

Prosperous business people and investors are learning hard lessons in today’s markets and economies about the difference between possessing wealth versus liquidity. Understanding and managing risk as the world is trying to emerge from a pandemic and recession has never been harder. Never before has discerning between risk and uncertainty been more difficult and yet vital.

Clinging to survival on the sidelines by holding your entire portfolio in cash is not sensible in a low-interest-rate environment. Avoiding investing in equities because you think you’ve missed a market peak or trough is frustrating in a market that persists on setting record highs and returning to them despite horrific economic news. The humiliating hazards of competing against a financial bubble lies in its habit of making fools of people who are in it and then sell too early, or others who missed it by being too timid to get invested.

It looks confusing as markets appear clueless in pricing risk. Welcome to 2020, where there’s no mass audience, no investment consensus. Everyone’s quarantining at home, deep in their own mental silos unable to discern global trends.

Today’s avalanche of data, information and advice streams effortlessly through your mobile devices. Then, hordes of financial advisers, friends and private bankers make it all too easy for you to avoid cultivating your own thoughts, actions and decisions – all relative to your personal risk preferences, life goals and ambitions.