In Israel, we feel the mix of fear of growing virus numbers as well as the optimism from the roll out of the vaccine. We hope the vaccine will reach each of you as soon as possible and hope that in time those skeptical towards the side effects will be proved wrong. It's seems that most of our webinar attendees believe COVID will still be with us in 2021 and that most of them will get vaccinated. Let's get Corona behind us!

Throughout Corona period, we have hosted numerous webinars via Zoom and have found this to be a major positive consequence of the virus. We recently held a webinar focused on 2021 key investment themes and you may follow the link to view it. For those who prefer to read, we will summarize the main points of that webinar here for you. During our webinar we asked the attendees to predict what will happen in the main issues discussed. Below you will find some more of the results.

I have just returned from spending two days with Pimco in London at their annual conference for investors. Pimco is one of the largest bond specialist firms in the world with an incredible depth of resources. The audience consisted of investment professionals from Europe, and it was apparent that everyone had come to hear not only Pimco’s macro-economic view, but also to clarify just how concerned we, as investors,  should be and what changes we should be making, if any, in the current circumstances.

It was an exceptionally high-level discussion and I will try to share some of the messages with you below. An interesting aspect of the investment world is how different personalities gravitate towards different asset classes. Optimists gravitate towards equities, pessimists to bonds and those with perhaps a tad too much hubris towards hedge funds. Pimco is a firm specializing in bonds. They ooze caution through the air vents. So whilst they were professionally non-committal about whether we are heading towards a cyclical change and/or recession, or not, they did an excellent job trying to identify whether there are any relevant signals now. The bottom line is no panic signals but elevated levels of caution looking into 2020.

When markets are going up strongly as they did in Q1 2019, no one asks tough questions and most investors focus on other aspects of their lives. Strong markets make our jobs as wealth managers easier. The main question being posed on a daily basis is should we sell down and take profits or remain loyal to our long-term plans and beliefs. This is a valid and serious question, which is worth the debate. Last year, January 2018 was a strong month and the rest of the year was negative, particularly February and the 4^th quarter. One has to ask the question if the gains from Q1 2019 are likely to be given up later in the year or not.

Winston Churchill once said of the British that they are a unique nation as “they are the only people who like to be told how bad things are.” The view of many experts these days is that it is difficult to accurately convey how much worse the financial situation could get for the UK in the coming years.

It has been a year since the Brexit vote. It is counter-intuitive that with the seemingly ever-increasing political uncertainty we have such strong positive market tailwinds. I remember very clearly taking phone calls from nervous investors who feared a repeat of 2008 due to the surprise vote. We recommended staying invested and undeniably, that was the right thing to do. If there is one thing I have learnt over my 17 years in the wealth management industry, it is that when the market is the scariest and the newspapers are using the most sensationalist fearful headlines - it is the time to buy, not sell.