Han Dieperink

Since 2014, the kickback fee, also known as distribution fee, has been abolished in the Netherlands. Prior to this, asset managers would continuously pay a fee to distributors whenever investments were made in the asset manager’s funds.

There has been a clear shift from public markets to private markets. Private markets are no longer an opportunistic satellite, but are now the core of the investment portfolio. 

During my student days in the late 1980s, I was one of the few students who had access to an Apple II computer. A big difference between Apple’s word processor then and the average word processor on a PC was WYSIWYG, acronym for What You See Is What You Get. On the screen, the document was visible just as it was printed. Even then, Apple was way ahead of the competition. 

The big difference between bonds and equities is that cash flows in bonds are fixed in advance. It makes inflation the great enemy of bonds. With equities, the effect of inflation is more complex. Companies that raise prices often realise higher sales as a result. But with a lag, inflation, in the form of rising wages and rising interest rates, creates margin pressure, as do rising energy prices.

Over the past 12 months, the yield on corporate bonds has been as much as minus 22 per cent. As a result, the effective yield on investment grade corporate bonds has now risen to 5.5 per cent at a duration of just over 6 years. This is in line with the return earned on investments according to the tax authorities, on which 31 per cent tax has to be paid this year.

At the same time, most banks still do not give interest on current account balances, but that is not subject to tax these days.

This will probably be the worst but also the best year for bonds ever. Rising interest rates and credit spreads are causing hefty price losses. Inflation is a bond investor’s worst enemy and it is skyrocketing. The fact that interest rates and credit spreads are rising fast is good for bond investors in the long run. Panic and volatility always create opportunities.

Low-risk stocks do better in the long run than high-risk stocks. For the record, this story equates risk with movement or, in stock market jargon, volatility. In itself, this is not the correct definition of risk. The flip side of risk in the form of volatility is opportunity.

The US equity market has rebounded some 15 percent from its low in June, helped by hopes of a Fed turnaround, better-than-expected corporate results and investors who were gloomy but invested.

The June low remarkably coincided with the peak in earnings expectations for 2022 and 2023. This means the entire price recovery can be attributed to higher valuations, made possible by lower interest rates. The fact that corporate earnings were better than expected, however, says more about expectations than about the underlying earnings trend.

European gas and electricity prices break records almost daily. The effect of energy on an economy is often underestimated. Almost all economic activity consists of energy, but in a different form. 

The value of a currency is based on trust. The Russian sanctions have not helped the status of Western currencies. Yet crypto currencies also have difficulty escaping Western sanctions. The digital currency issued by China’s central bank, also known as the e-yuan, is succeeding. It may gradually gain market share from the dollar.