| Time to turn to wine as conditions get more challenging – cheers! Our last two In My Opinion columns have brought recommendations for investing in alternative assets as a method of facing challenging traditional markets.
This week’s In My Opinion brings us Alexander Westgarth, CEO at WineCap, who writes that in recent years, fine wine investing has risen in prominence as an attractive facet of the alternative investment space.
Westgarth points out that although wine is mainly known for its leisure benefits, fine wine investments can provide both stability and returns to investment portfolios during times of market volatility and uncertainty.
Fine wine investing can be a safe haven for investors in times of instability, he says. And he has compelling data to support his case. At the start of the 2008 recession, the Liv-ex Fine Wine 1000, which tracks 1,000 wines from across the world, dropped 10 per cent from its peak in August 2008 to a
low in December of that year. But by early 2009, it began a steady recovery and recouped all its losses by the end of 2009.
In contrast, the FTSE 100 fell 47.82 per cent and took over five years to return to pre-2008 levels. More recently, the first quarter of 2020 saw stock markets spiral down in the wake of COVID-19. While the S&P Global Luxury Index fell 23 per cent, the Liv-ex Fine Wine 1000 slipped just 4 per cent and had already begun its recovery by May 2020.
Turning to that ever-present need to digitise, our interview this week from Harriet O’Brien, was with Yaela Shamberg, co-founder and chief product officer with InvestCloud. Shamberg says that technology is an ever-more important resource for wealth advisers, aiding engagement with clients and enabling hyper-tailored portfolio construction as well as presenting opportunities for progressively more sophisticated financial planning.
Extreme examples of digitisation lie in the
crypto markets and this week brought us a film from Wealth Adviser’s sister title, ETF Express, with Asset TV, and a key conversation on the future of finance and the crypto winter.
To watch the film please click here.
Beverly Chandler, managing editor, Wealth
Adviser
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