Comfort food for turbulent times

No business is totally bulletproof, but people still have to eat during a sharemarket rout

- Scott Phillips

There’s more than enough uncertainty in the Australian (and global) economy right now. Inflation. Interest rates. Unemployment. Spending. And, yes, the R-word: recession. It could tempt an investor to sell everything, put the cash in the bank and stay in bed. But by the time the coast is clear, share prices have usually regained most, if not all, of their losses.

To wit: the Covid crash of February and March 2020 was the fastest bear market in history. The ASX lost more than 35% of its value in a little over a month – which all happened before the first local community transmission of Covid-19.

And then? Well, the market started to climb. And climb. And climb. Remember, this was before Covid had escaped into the Australian community. Before the Delta and Omicron variants. Before a vaccine.

Those who waited for the coast to be clear missed all that. Indeed, those who wanted to wait for the pandemic to be over had to wait until only a few months ago, when the World Health Organisation declared just that. And, of course, that doesn’t mean Covid is gone. The price of waiting was high, indeed.