Storm Clouds Are Gathering

High government, corporate and personal debt means this is a time to be cautious.

- Ross Greenwood

Just a little unsolicited, and plainly obvious, advice. Be a little careful. If you want a higher authority, and you should, note the recent comment of Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund: “When there are too many clouds, it takes one lightning to start the storm.”

And right now Lagarde cites four major storm clouds: Brexit; the China-US trade war; tight liquidity; and a sharper than expected slowdown in China’s economy.

Lagarde is not short of a colourful phrase to sum up the world economy. In the brilliant documentary Inside Job, which forensically unpicked the 2008 financial crisis, she said to the then US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson: “We are watching this tsunami coming. And you are just proposing that we ask which swimming costume we are going to put on.”

So her warning now about economic conditions (over which you, our banks and even, to a certain extent, our government and Reserve Bank have little or no control) should be a sobering reminder to not view falls in sharemarkets and property markets as immediate signals to go bargain hunting.