4 years ago

How has the pandemic impacted secular trends, opportunities?

Yves Bonzon, Group Chief Investment Officer at Swiss Wealth Manager, Julius Baer talks to Gulf Insider on how the pandemic impacted secular trends and opportunities going forward. Did you see a major shift in trends from 2019 to 2020 due to the pandemic? The pandemic did not as much shift secular trends as accelerated them, and substantially at that. When we first formulated the key themes for this decade, we hypothesized the end of the neoliberal era was close and envisioned a new unorthodox policy template which places a greater importance on fiscal stimulus and debt monetization, as suggested by proponents of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). The immediate policy response to the Covid-19 crisis was taken right out of that MMT policy toolbox – with governments rushing to implement massive stimulus programs, backed by central banks annihilating rates to their lowest levels, while pumping liquidity to support asset prices. Recently, the Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome Powell, confirmed that the central bank will not even think about raising rates until they see the white in inflation’s eye. This is an extreme departure from the old policy paradigm. How has Covid-19 changed how you look at strategic asset allocation? The Strategic Asset […]