2022: Interesting times indeed

Wade Witbooi, Portfolio Manager at Glacier Invest, sheds some light – and calm – on the challenging year we’ve just experienced and what this means going forward.

“May you live in interesting times” is an old Chinese blessing as well as a curse. If we’ve learnt anything over the past few years, it is that this quote can be applied, too: “Making predictions is hard, especially about the future”.

The past three years have been challenging, including a global pandemic, a war, record global inflation, climate change, financial bubbles, and an ever-increasing load shedding.

2022 starts strongly
2022 started off strongly for South African investors as the FTSE/JSE All Share Index hit an all-time high of 77,536 index points on 2 March 2022, and the rand reached R14.47 to the US dollar on 30 March 2022. However, the two subsequent quarters saw a massive risk-reversal driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, driving commodity prices higher and giving global inflation a second upward leg driven by supply constraints and price surges.

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