Category: MARKET

In the world of investing there are myriad ways to create wealth. These systems are complex, integrated and offer just enough certainty to attract our attention, but not enough to be a sure-thing. Two investable options that are talked about daily are stocks and shares. They sound and look very similar, but are in separate […]

Times of festivities and celebrations are often paradoxical in that we want to see friends and family, but we find that when we’re with the ones we don’t often see (only for big occasions and end-of-year-bashes), they have opinions that challenge our own and they’re all too willing to offer advice that we haven’t asked […]

There are three things we should never discuss around the dinner table: money, politics and religion. Ironically, the three things we normally always talk about around the dinner table… are money, politics and religion! One reason for this is because they’re all connected, and they’re all HEAVILY influenced by you, me and everyone that we […]

Every holiday season, the search begins for gifts that keep on giving. From music to cooking classes and other hobby-related courses – scores of us try to find a gift that won’t be tossed onto the pile of unwanted, unused and under-appreciated thingy-me-bobs. We look for things that are ‘cool’ or ‘trendy’ – but ultimately, […]

Anyone with a mediocre knowledge of investing will be familiar with the term “stock”.  But few people are aware that there common stocks and preferred stocks. And they’re fundamentally different. Stocks have been traded for over 400 years – the first common stocks were made available in 1602 through the Dutch East India Company. They […]

What do you do when a bear attacks? For many of us, we don’t live near any bears, so we’re likely to be unprepared. When it comes to a bear market, the situation is not too different. No one can predict a bear market, and for some it’s not even easy to recognise when a […]

When lockdown happened, it happened fast. For some, there were only a few days to prepare for an indeterminate time of severe restrictions. For others, they had more to do and less time in which to do it. Travellers were stuck abroad in foreign countries and had to follow equally foreign regulations. At times like […]

Ray Dalio is an American billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist who has served as co-chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates since 1985. As a thought leader and industry pioneer, he also founded the world’s largest hedge fund and firmly advocates that “diversification is a wonderful, mechanical, good way to reduce risk without reducing expected […]

This is not such an easy question to answer. Many of us may shoot up our hands, quickly realizing that what follows is a tough call-to-action: “Then start saving!” So we shrivel back and think we’ll rather start saving next month, or when we get our next increase. Others, already encumbered with tough monthly expenses, […]

Medical aid (including insurance products) contributions need to form part of our overall financial planning. Every year these products are adjusted slightly – both in how much they cost in monthly premiums and in what they cover. These increasing costs can feel burdensome and unnecessary to those who seldom use their medical cover, but they […]

The largest factor in our wealth creation, and our wealth protection, is our behaviour. How we choose to save and how we choose to spend are the habits that will determine if we are able to grow our money over time, or if we will erode it over time. There are other factors, certainly. We […]

Not to be confused with the EFF (the South African political party or the lesser-known Electronic Frontier Foundation…), ETFs have been gaining popularity in investment portfolios for about a decade. ETFs (exchange-traded funds) were first developed in the early 1990s by Nathan Most, they offer both retail and institutional investors a great passive investment option. […]

Markets don’t make you money; your habits… make you money. As creatures of habit, we ultimately become our own best friend, or our own worst enemy. This is why it’s important to be mindful of how our emotions affect our choices and influence our behaviour. We can remind ourselves of this time and time again, […]

In a 2018 article, Tim Davis (President of The UPS Store) said this of small businesses: “Small business is the backbone of the economy. … It’s these businesses that are driving local economies, providing jobs for local residents and impacting key community organizations, through charity and service.” Whilst small businesses are crucial to the infrastructure […]

One thing we can always know for certain is the past; but with far less certainty, the future, and even ‘later today’… eludes us. Despite knowing this, we often fall into the trap of thinking that we should have done certain things better, because we can see (looking back…) what a difference it would have […]

Here’s the thing about the lighthouse – it’s focus is always offshore. At the time of writing this article, the world is still flailing under the storm of the Coronavirus and the conditions have caused us all to rethink many of the foundations in our lives that we once thought secure. Just like the view […]

In light of the difficult times recently, Southern Africa has been awash in low interest rates. When South Africa significantly cut its base interest rate from an already-low 6.25% down to 4.25%, it officially became the lowest interest rate the country has ever had. In late 2019, the Bank of Namibia’s Monetary Policy Committee reduced […]

Most of us are chronic under-savers even in the best of times. Yet with the current economic environment, lots of previously hypothetical concepts like ‘what if I’m retrenched or have my salary cut?’ are far more concrete – and, unfortunately, more likely to happen. There’s never been a time when saving is more important, but […]

Most Sub-Saharan African countries are chronic ‘dis-savers’. But, you don’t have to be. Before we look at the options, let’s take a snapshot of recent events. Last July, the South African Savings Institute gave the country a wakeup call when it said that the average household rate had fallen from 0.5% per month in 2018 […]

Current investors have seen more ‘interesting times’, more black swans and market freefalls, than any other generation gone before. From the 2008 global financial crisis, followed by the longest bull run in history, to Brexit, several downgrades for South Africa and then the COVID-19 pandemic, today’s investors have run the gamut. Their emotions have run […]