Forecasts for interest rates and inflation to remain well above 3.5 per cent into financial year 2025 mean savers and investors face big challenges to protect and grow their wealth into the future.This “new normal” of higher rates and inflation means investors should obtain good risk-free rates of return in the form of high-interest savings accounts or bonds, according to some investors.
Anthony Selby, a senior adviser at financial planners Financial Spectrum, says an allocation to high-interest savings accounts makes sense for anyone who wants to protect and grow capital. “For the first time in over a decade, investors holding cash are out of purgatory and being paid savings rates of around 5 per cent per year to be patient and selective,” he says.
Boubouras also names artificial intelligence darling Nvidia as a buy for capital growth, given it has a market-leading position in the high-tech manufacturing of computer chips required to deliver advanced internet services to consumers. “It has very high earnings growth,” he says. “The valuation may be a little stretched now, but it has earnings resilience and limited competition.”
Swanger also says an alternative way to play the investment boom in clean energy is to own lithium miners that have been knocked down to cheaper valuations over the past 12 months. “Pilbara Minerals, Liontown, or Allkem are large ASX producers of lithium deposits that will benefit from ongoing trends in the sustainable production of energy,” he says.