April Investment Newsletter
Dear Clients,
We hope this letter finds you in good spirits.
For most New Zealander’s the last four or five weeks have been like no other. Never in our lifetimes have we all (except for a few essential businesses) been effectively ordered to go home and stay home.
Of course, we all know why that was necessary. The COVID-19 health crisis we have been fighting is effectively a war that has simultaneously been waged all over the globe. And unfortunately, as in all wars, there have tragically been significant human casualties.
Throughout the health crisis, international investment markets have remained open and, befitting this utterly extraordinary environment, the markets reacted in unprecedented fashion.
The swift emergence of COVID-19 and the different containment measures that many countries employed in an attempt to contain its spread (ranging from social distancing, to travel bans, to self-isolation and lockdowns), created sudden and significant shockwaves for all markets.
Reflecting the extreme nature of this event, the enclosed Autumn Update attempts to provide a detailed explanation about the market reaction to COVID-19. We hope you will find it interesting, if not useful.
A quick word of warning - the enclosed newsletter is significantly longer than normal. Unfortunately, the unique and complex nature of what we have all just experienced couldn’t be easily condensed into just a few paragraphs.
As we write this, we hope the worst of the health crisis is beginning to be behind us and that, here in New Zealand at least, we may soon be able to move towards a resumption of some greater ‘normality’.
As the year unfolds, we will look forward to continuing to update you with the progress of investment markets in, we hope, much less turbulent times.
Please read our detailed Economic Commentary by clicking on the link below.
Kind Regards,
Warwick Walker