It's worse than '87 but not end of world, says Geoff Lewis
Geoff Lewis has charted a course through the major economic collapses of the past four decades, but he said that navigating through the current one could be the most treacherous yet.
Facing a one-two punch from an unprecedented financial crisis and a global recession, most equity benchmarks around the region have nosedived by at least 50 per cent this year. And Mr Lewis, the head of investment services at JF Asset Management, recognises that fund managers must now tread a fine line between chasing after rock-bottom valuations and keeping cash on hand to meet redemptions.
But he believes that this storm will pass like previous crises and remains cautiously optimistic that financial markets will begin to bounce back next year.
And drawing on his leisure reading about the rise and fall of ancient empires, Mr Lewis has a unique perspective on the sudden ups and downs of the market.
'People talk about a financial armageddon, but there actually was an Armageddon in Megiddo [in Israel] and it's been ransacked and pillaged by just about anything that walked past it,' said Mr Lewis, 59. 'The world has seen lots of armageddons.'
The imaginative and innovative measures that central banks have implemented to shore up the global financial system have also given him cause for hope because he said it signalled that policymakers had learned from previous market disasters.
