B2B Central

Dave Mohr (Chief Investment Strategist) & Izak Odendaal (Investment Strategist)

25 May 2021

Why investors are nervous about inflation

By Staff Writer

Inflation is still very much in focus globally. Investors are nervous that sharply higher inflation will put pressure on central banks to raise interest rates, potentially knocking the global economy and short-circuiting equity markets. After a strong run, most global equity indices pulled back in recent days as risk aversion increased.
09 Mar 2021

SA's economy and commodity prices

By Staff Writer

How excited should we be about the year-long rally in commodity prices? Since South Africa’s economy and financial markets are heavily impacted by commodity price moves, the answer is particularly important for local investors.
01 Mar 2021

On balance, things are looking good, says Old Mutual Wealth

By Staff Writer

February may be the shortest month of the year, but it’s not short on events. The clouds are starting to part, with almost 200 million people worldwide now vaccinated against the coronavirus, including 67 000 South Africans.

01 Feb 2021

The wait for vaccines to bring Covid-19 under control

By Staff Writer

Are we there yet? Investors and parents tired of home-schooling are asking this question in unison. The answer, unfortunately, is not quite. Since November, global investors have had to balance two competing ideas: on the one hand, the arrival of vaccines means life can start to return to normal.

28 Jan 2020

The coronavirus and your investments

By Janice Roberts

Investment is an exercise in optimism. You put away your hard-earned money in the belief that you’ll get a larger amount back at some point in the future. However, that belief is often fragile since our brains are hard-wired to worry. Anxiety and stress helped our ancestors navigate a very dangerous environment.

25 Jun 2019

Setting the stage for lower rates

By Janice Roberts

By Dave Mohr (Chief Investment Strategist) & Izak Odendaal (Investment Strategist) from Old Mutual Multi-Managers For local investors, the main event of the past week was not the State of the Nation Address (SONA), though we will touch on it below. The main event happened thousands of miles away in Washington DC, when a man...
27 Mar 2019

Low inflation confirmation

By Janice Roberts

By Dave Mohr (Chief Investment Strategist) & Izak Odendaal (Investment Strategist) from Old Mutual Multi-Managers  South Africans were left cursing in the dark during last week’s stage four load shedding, which, if it continues, will damage economic growth and sentiment. However, local financial markets tend to take their cues from abroad, rather than domestically, and...
25 Jun 2018

Trade war rumblings and the rand’s retreat

By Janice Roberts

here’s an old saying in markets that when the US sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. When the US throws punches, markets can get bruised. US President Trump announced that tariffs would now be implemented against $50 billion of Chinese imports to punish China for alleged unfair trade practices. China’s predictable retaliation...
21 May 2018

'There are three types of interest rates or borrowing costs in an economy'

By Janice Roberts

By Dave Mohr (Chief Investment Strategist) & Izak Odendaal (Investment Strategist), Old Mutual Multi-Managers. They say three’s a crowd, but the worry for many investors is that more than three is a stampede. The yield on the benchmark 10-year US government (Treasury) bond broke decisively above 3% for the first time since 2011. A nice round...
07 May 2018

The greenback makes a comeback

By Janice Roberts

By Dave Mohr (Chief Investment Strategist) & Izak Odendaal (Investment Strategist), Old Mutual Multi-Managers. In the past two weeks, the two major global central banks both held monetary policy meetings that ended with interest rates unchanged. What is more important than what was done (or not) is what was said.
24 Apr 2018

Making sense of shifts and swings

By Janice Roberts

By Dave Mohr (Chief Investment Strategist) & Izak Odendaal (Investment Strategist), Old Mutual Multi-Managers Financial market activity is often dominated by particular themes or narratives. Sometimes these storylines are created after the fact to explain random market movements, but they are often based in reality. Towards the end of 2017, the dominant theme was ‘synchronised...