Insights

The year 2020 was extraordinary for most risk assets. As we wrote in last month’s Investment Perspectives, the unprecedented fiscal response to the pandemic caught some investors wrong-footed.  

The year 2020 will be remembered for many events. Besides COVID-19, there were the Australian bushfires and US political turmoil. 

To state the obvious, 2020 was a year like no other. The COVID-19 pandemic presented challenges the likes of which individuals, businesses and governments have never experienced before. The impact of this was to push an otherwise pretty robust global economy into recession, force lockdowns and create social dislocation on a previously unimaginable scale. 

With the spectre of COVID-19 now diminishing in the wake of new vaccines, some investors are rightly refocusing their attention on longer-term risks and fundamentals.

Recent market-sensitive events, including the outcome of the US presidential election and Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine announcement, have resulted in some significant swings in market prices across global equities and listed real estate.

Chris Bedingfield addresses some of the myths and misconceptions of retail property to establish whether today’s depressed prices represent an opportunity or a trap.

The November 2020 US presidential election is between two polarising individuals in Donald Trump and Joe Biden, who represent very different views and approaches to leading the US for the next four-year presidential term. The policy positions of the two parties are likely to have far-reaching impacts on the US and global economy; and specifically, infrastructure investment.

The world has enjoyed over a century of ‘progress’ which has seen developed market industrialisation, huge and ongoing population growth, globalisation and, in more recent times, the emergence of a growing middle class in developing countries.

In June, we provided an update on the real estate market and some early observations regarding the impact of COVID-19