Market & Portfolio Update - January 2021

9 February 2021 by Lifetime in Market Update

Market & Portfolio Update - January 2021

January continued the eventfulness of 2020 with the US presidency and Senate elections being finalised, continued social unrest in the US, new strains of Covid-19 and the roll-out of vaccines around the world. The result for share markets was a slight easing in performance for the month. Arguably, a much-needed breather after strong returns in the second half of 2020.

Video game retailer GameStop stole headlines during January. GameStop, among several other companies, was subject to a ‘short squeeze’ where a large number of retail traders joined together to drive the share prices of these companies up, forcing several hedge funds to also buy the stock to close their short positions (a trading strategy where the investor borrows stock from another investor and sells it, betting the share price will fall).

The GameStop share price has since reversed much of its rise, causing a wild ride of gains and losses for those involved. For our Booster clients - these portfolios don’t have any exposure to GameStop – and Booster don’t use short selling either, so clients’ savings are not exposed to similar ‘short squeezes’.

Booster also took advantage of markets moving around as these events unfolded to tweak their funds’ Australian share investments more in favour of those businesses that are likely to benefit the most from the global economy reopening – from banks to travel and recruitment companies – adding to allocations that we bought during December.

Consilium’s approach reminded us that while Indexing can be an effective strategy, not all indexes are the same. An example is when Tesla was added to the S&P 500 recently, and the world’s largest index providers all scrambled to pay $4.6 Trillion in to buy shares of Tesla. This caused a huge surge in the price, however, Consilium portfolios were able to patiently wait until prices came down. This led to all 18 Consilium portfolios outperforming their respective indexes for the quarter.

preview image - Market & Portfolio Update - April 2025

Market & Portfolio Update - April 2025

Global markets began April with some volatility as investors digested “Liberation Day” tariffs announced by the Trump administration. In particular, investors feared a tariff war would lead to higher inflation, lower global growth, and the potential erosion of the historic ‘safe haven’ status enjoyed by the US dollar. However, the markets recovered a significant portion of these losses following the announcement that all reciprocal tariffs except China’s would be delayed for 90 days. Due to the volatility, global markets were down -3.8% for the month.

13 May 2025 by Lifetime in Market Update
preview image - Staying Cyber Smart

Staying Cyber Smart

At Lifetime, looking after your financial wellbeing includes helping you stay safe online. Lately, we’ve seen an increase in online scam attempts across the financial sector here in New Zealand, so we thought this was a good time to share a few friendly reminders on how you can stay protected.

30 April 2025 by Tim Bakkenes