Grappling With Global Investing

- Anne Cabot-Alletzhauser

When the Advisory Committee met to review the submissions for this issue on global investing, a collective GROAN issued forth from the team. It’s not often that we feel the industry needs a serious wakeup call – but this was one of those times.

What got us so riled up? For as long as I have been in South Africa, now going on 27 years, it has seemed as though the singular focus of investors here has been to get as much of one’s investment assets out of South Africa and into the global markets. The rand was purportedly only going one direction – down. So, the battle cry was “if you could find a way to get your money out, do so”.

Perhaps this view could have been forgiven back during those uncertain times, but by now investment professionals should have developed a more considered perspective on why, how and where to invest outside of South Africa.

What was surprising, though, was how many of the submissions we got on this topic still reflected either incorrect or inadequately considered arguments. There were the same old arguments that marketing departments have been using for the last two decades to lure investors into these more profitable investment options – with little new thinking as to whether those arguments still pertained.

The answer is – they don’t. Or, put differently, there is just so much more information an investor needs to consider before making a global investment decision, and that information has not been forthcoming when it is needed most. Global investing is far from a “slam-dunk” decision.

The good news is that there is some extremely insightful new research emerging in South Africa that is providing considerably more clarity on the issues. This edition of