SIMON BROWN: I’m chatting now with Andrew Dittburner, chief investment officer at Old Mutual Wealth Private Client [Securities]. Andrew, I appreciate the early morning time. [It was] a great [email] that you put out, packed full of data around bear markets – 95 years of data.
But now suddenly I’m getting phone calls from some people who aren’t even our clients saying, ‘Should we be selling?’. That, I suppose, highlights the degree of fear that this market [brings], given that we haven’t been through a bear market in such a long time. ANDREW DITTBERNER: Yes. We are referring to averages here. We know that every market’s different. There are different factors at play. And if you think about the negative news flow that we have endured this year, it should be no surprise that we sit in this position. We’ve got inflation on every year’s high, so 40 years’ rising interest rates. [There’s] war, supply-chain issues, China lockdown. Now there is talk of potential recession.
I think this comes back to the point. Also if we look at the averages that we spoke to earlier, the average from the previous peak back to that peak is about five years. I think this talks to the point that investing, particularly in growth assets like equities, is a long-term game. You’ve got to have your strategy right. And if you are in the market, a period like this can’t make you exit if your strategy is in place.