The View | This one star investor reveals his best picks of the year, and where to position for 2017
Focusing on out-of-favour sectors paid off handsomely for courageous investors this year, but 2017 could be a year for following the crowd
Each year part of my onerous job with the South China Morning Post is to interview one of the world’s best-known and most successful entrepreneurs, Santa Claus.
Claus has built a Christian festival into a global manufacturing and distribution conglomerate in the peace and goodwill sector. His wealth has enabled him to establish Elf and Safety, an investment and philanthropic family office. It is known for its remarkably successful, low risk-high performance, multi-asset portfolio strategy, based on a tested investment philosophy known as hindsight.
Santa manages the assets himself and with the help of magic dust (and some figgy pudding, looking at his profile) he explained to me his winners of 2016.
“Mr Claus; like every good fund manager you’ve closed the books in early December before the markets get illiquid. What was your favourite investment this year?”
He rubbed his silvery whiskers wisely; “Investment is about suspending disbelief when all those around you are looking elsewhere. I picked the unfashionable commodity markets. Prices had got too low. Oil fell from US$115 to US$27.88 in 18 months. Hellooo? So far this year, oil is up 50 per cent and copper 26 per cent. Silver rose twice as much as gold, which is up 11%. Wheat was the worst performer, down 13 per cent - unlike bread in Hong Kong, which keeps going up. Nothing to do with the pricing gouging, fat cat, Hong Kong supermarket cartel,” he barked.
“Santa, foreign exchange underlies all investment performance. What did you do?”