Monthly Market & Fund Update Markets bounced back sharply during April on the back of positive news. Many countries started to relax lockdown restrictions and positive signs from China’s economy restored some hope that the impact from COVID 19 will be shorter lived than initially expected. April saw the 5th best month for the MSCI […]
Public health outbreaks and epidemics like the recent coronavirus can quickly scare investors and, eventually, affect economies and businesses. Coronavirus market sell-off If one couples a potential global pandemic with overvalued developed equity markets, there is only one obvious outcome – a sell off. Many market participants are calling for synchronised interest rate cuts from central banks […]
Goals-based investing is about aligning your investments with your life. When you decide how to invest, you should start with your end goal in mind in order to ensure that you are not distracted by short-term noise, such as a weakening or strengthening exchange rate, power failure or another Cabinet reshuffle. Goals-based investing, where an […]
The current 2018/2019 tax year is ending on 28 February 2019. During this time, it is important to remember to make use of certain benefits for the year such as your annual deductions and exclusions: Contributions to a retirement annuity can be claimed as a tax deduction when filing your annual tax return. These contributions […]
In this post, we look back at the year’s performance of the various asset classes and highlight one of the most statistically significant observations (mean reversion) in financial markets and how it can benefit you as a long-term investor. The most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect – Warren Buffet Growth Assets Continue […]
It has been a good few years for cash. As shown in Graph 1, over the past three years cash (i.e. highly liquid assets, like money market funds and fixed-interest assets, such as Treasury bills) has delivered decent returns, when compared to equities and bonds, with significantly less volatility amid ongoing global uncertainty. This has been […]
When you consider the biggest risk to your wealth – Every investor would have heard of equity and listed property referred to as ‘risk assets’. They would also have seen a graph which shows the relative risk of different asset classes, with cash at the bottom as the ‘lowest risk’ and equity at the top […]
The South African Revenue Service (SARS) wants to help you pay for your retirement. The way in which they do this is by offering generous tax deductions when you make contributions to your retirement annuity (RA), pension or provident fund. On 1 March 2016, the tax deductions for retirement savings increased from 15% to 27.5% – which means you can […]
– On The Ordinary South African There is a massive gap in the country’s finances, to put it bluntly. South Africa has an R48-billion hole in the fiscus that needs to be filled, and part of Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba’s solution in the previous 2018 Budget speech was to push up value-added tax (VAT) by […]
This week , S&P cut South Africa’s long-term foreign currency debt rating to one notch below investment grade. The local currency rating was also cut but remains investment grade. The outlook was kept as negative: Long-term foreign currency rating cut to BB+ from BBB- Long-term local currency rating cut to BBB- from BBB Below is […]
