Happy New Year, we hope you had a great Christmas break.
A good place to start any ‘Outlook’ is to have a look back at our thoughts for 2021, below are a few excerpts from same;
‘…..the lesson in this is to have your plan, ignore the short-term noise and stay invested even at the darkest hour.’
‘…..personally, I’m looking forward to 2021, getting my jab, the re-opening of the world, attending sports events and being able to travel again.’
On the first point, 2021 certainly proved this point with the following table summarising the returns generated by the various global stock market indices and asset classes;
Investors who followed this advice and remained invested have seen the value of their portfolios increase over the past 12 months. However, the divergence of returns across asset classes underlines the importance of one of our key investment principles at Wallstone, that being Diversification. For 2022, many anticipate that the economic recovery and bull market are beginning to mature and we expect growth to moderate over the next 12 to 18 months. The S&P 500 closed at a 52-week high the week of Christmas and saw 70 new all-time highs in 2021. Only 1995 has seen more. There was only one 5% market pullback during 2021, the historical average is nearly three. The impact of sustained inflation and the possible corresponding rise in global interest rates cannot be ignored so we suspect 2022 will be a much more challenging year for markets………this no doubt will present as much opportunity as threat for those long-term investors holding cash allocations in their portfolios. It will remain as important as ever to keep your portfolio under review and ensure it’s aligned to your long-term objectives and at Wallstone, we’ll certainly try our best to assist in this regard.
In relation to the second point above, we did get our jabs (most of us!), returned to sporting events and began to travel again. This hasn’t been without its challenges and many faced a Christmas in isolation not being able to see or visit family and friends. The world as we knew it has not yet returned to normal and it may be some time before it does.
However, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t continue to make plans and look to the future as one thing is for certain, Life is what Happens in between all the Plans we Make!
Have a great year and we look forward to welcoming you to our new offices in early 2022 as we continue to innovate and present new opportunities as the markets and year evolves.
