In summary, the already weak economy has been hit hard by the impact COVID-19. Whilst markets have recovered from their March lows, the outlook will depend on our ability to grow the South African economy, which will take time to recover.
Before we get too depressed, it is worthwhile to take note of the positive steps towards policy certainty undertaken by our government.
Unfortunately, government debt is at unsustainable levels, and if nothing is done, there may a time when our government may default on its debt obligations. As the Honourable Tito said: “We must be careful to avoid the fate of countries like Argentina and Ecuador that defaulted on their debt this year”.
One of the measures that Tito Mboweni has spoken of, is the reduction in wage increases to government employees as well as other cost control measures.
South Africa has made some good progress on critical areas including a new round of Independent Power Producer agreements and the release of additional spectrum to improve broadband speed and access.
These changes could be critical for economic growth in the long run.
Whilst it has been a very bumpy ride, in general equity markets have delivered positive returns over the year to date, mostly driven by the returns to resources stocks.
Our weak currency made our exports very attractive and increased rand earnings to those companies exporting commodities.
Just recently, government bonds yields have fallen quite sharply, this is probably as a result of investor flows into our bond market, which provides a very attractive return on investment, and this would have provided positive returns for some of our funds.
The rand has continued to strengthen against the dollar and at the time of writing was under R16 to the US Dollar, but offshore investments priced in Rands still gave positive performance in line with the global stock market recovery from COVID-19.
Listed property, once the asset class to invest in remains down almost 50%, negatively impacting on our investment portfolios. Unfortunately, this is where COVID-19 may have changed the commercial property landscape forever, as more of us may end up working from home negating the need for large offices.
In general, fund performance has struggled to deliver the returns that we would have expected for your money, even over longer periods and the returns to anything other than cash are disappointing.
That said, we don’t think keeping your money in the bank will provide the stellar relative returns it has in the past as the South African Reserve Bank has reduced interest rates, and we think risk assets will start to recover their performance.
Whilst the efficiency of the portfolios has served investment performance well relative to our industry peers.
The team at CoreShares and OUTvest are in the process of making changes to the investment allocations in the portfolio. We will provide information of these changes in early 2021.
2020 was the year that no-one predicted. It was a year that followed difficult years and many South Africans already weary of low economic growth prospects, high inflation, unemployment and corruption were thrown into a global pandemic that will change the lives of billions of individuals.
In times like this, we tend to focus on the negatives, and they start to define our way of thinking. We tend to use this to define our outlook and our way of thinking starts to define how we react to situations.
Economies are no different. Confidence is one of the leading indicators of recovery and movements in asset prices. In our case, confidence needs to come from our government.
It’s is very late in the day, but we believe it is coming.
Speak to one of our financial advisors and start your investment journey.