After a 4 year, Covid-enforced hiatus, we were really excited at the opportunity to expand our horizons and explore the broad financial services landscape in the US.  Given the size of the country, this is no easy undertaking, so we limited our travels to two contrasting but equally interesting and important cities – New York City and Washington DC.

In our Investment Committee meetings, we have often considered our exposure to China.  After all, how do you ignore the second largest economy in the world with the world’s second largest population, the country with the highest number of patents and the country with the largest number of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) graduates per annum.  Do we go direct, with a discreet China exposure or do we go via the EM index?

The preparation for our annual offshore trip was a lot more organized than in 2018, in that this year Andrew arranged his visa with a three-week buffer period. Our Airbnb was once again secured well in advance, and all that remained was for us to get to London and soak up the opportunity to meet with a cross section of Global fund managers. The agenda for this year was to expose ourselves to either fund managers or asset classes that were not currently in our consideration set or part of our current solutions. Once again, we were not disappointed.

In December, delegates will come together for the 54th ANC National Conference during which new officials will be elected to lead the party for the next five years. This is a contentious issue, because the president of the ANC will almost certainly become the next president of the nation in 2019, or earlier. Although there are several comrades battling it out for the seat at the head of the table, this is really a race between Cyril Ramaphosa and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

Given how much value we got from our trip last year to London, we were really excited to head off again in late May to get our annual offshore fix. Our 2016 trip was incredibly insightful for our fledgling business, as it very quickly contextualized South Africa’s relative size in the investment universe (you will recall Blackrock and Legg Mason’s AUM at that stage were $ 5.2trillion and the JSE market cap was at     $ 186 bn). In addition, the different styles of asset management were quite revealing in that, as South Africans we are programmed to accept larger “bets”, whilst offshore they are very comfortable with small incremental returns across a very broad set of holdings. I guess the investment universe is so much bigger.

Our return to office was quite different to previous years.  After a very special family holiday for the Finlayson clan, there was no reluctance to head back to work and face a challenging corporate machine, as we have both done for the past 15 years. This was replaced by the excitement of getting back in the saddle and focusing on our own business. Our desire to create an exceptional Multi Family Office wealth management business, is still front and centre in our minds. Our first year ended in a place that we are very comfortable with and gives us good impetus to keep working to reach the goals of our clients and of Maven Wealth

We woke up this morning to what seemed like Groundhog day. With the Brexit surprise still fresh in our memories, the world was shocked as Donald Trump was comfortably voted in as the next POTUS.

We've just returned from a week in London where we had the opportunity to sit across the table from the managers looking after our client's money. We have come back with some great insights and can reflect on time well spent.

South Africa is facing the harsh reality of a ratings downgrade as economic growth, social inequality and political instability fall under the spotlight of global ratings agencies

A recent report from News 24 introducing Maven Wealth

The firing of Nhlanhla Nene was a shock to the investment community around the world. The markets registered their disapproval instantly. However, it was this reaction that forced an immediate turnaround and saw Pravin Gordhan reinstated

A recent client interaction reminded us of the importance of truly understanding your client. Only once you have a deep understanding of their total circumstances can you provide valuable advice.