07 December, 2018 Financial Planning

Putting Markets in Perspective

What I learned on my Chinese vacation
In the past couple of months, the Dow has moved from its peak of 26,966 on Oct 3 to its level of
24,821 at the time of writing. That works out to a decline of 9.2% - just a tiny bit shy of a
correction, defined as a 10% decline. Markets have a tendency to exhibit corrections every year
or two, so what we’ve seen so far is well within the bounds of a very normal and very healthy
market. I can’t promise you that they won’t go down further or that they will recover quickly. I
think it’s likely to come back fairly quickly, but there’s no way to know. What I can say is that
this is incredibly normal behaviour and that, if you are one of our clients, then we’ve built your
portfolio with volatility in mind and are doing all we can to take advantage of it.
What I really want to impress upon you though is what moves markets in the long term. I just
spent the last two weeks in China and quite frankly, my view of what’s going on in the world has
changed. Click Here to read more.