In the last episode of the monthly podcast “On the fourth floor”, Alessandro Fugnoli, Kairos strategist, talks about the near future and about what should we expect for the coming year. 2022, explains Fugnoli, “is likely to open with a mini-recession in Germany and with almost zero growth in the United States. The markets had accompanied the great hopes of the beginning of the year with an extraordinary rise in the stock markets, only to then empty it from within in recent months. This emptying has left the glittering facade of indices at historic highs almost intact, but has eroded the value of the vast majority of stocks and in particular of the more speculative ones”.
What to do with your investments? The advice is to "maintain more than the usual balance of judgment", because just as the enthusiasm seen at the beginning of 2021 was exaggerated, the pessimism we have been seeing in recent weeks seems excessive, especially if we consider that this sentiment does not is supported “by a structural deterioration of the underlying picture, the strategist points out.
What must be kept in mind is that, despite the factors of uncertainty, the global economy "is back to pre-pandemic levels and a growth which, although radically reduced compared to initial expectations, still remains very good", argues Fugnoli, all the more that as we have learned over the last 2 years, "in the quarters in which a new variant spreads, growth stops, without however becoming negative, but in periods of respite the rebounds are very strong".
“The first months of 2022 – predicts Fugnoli – could be again arrest, but not of recession. And it is not even certain that the slowdown will be that profound, since we have not yet taken measures for the Omicron variant and we cannot exclude that its impact will ultimately be limited".
As far as investment strategies are concerned, the advice is therefore to wait to lighten up the share weight in wallets. “If anything, it is a question of increasing the weight of the children in the coming weeks defensive sectors remained in the shadows in 2021 and now interesting again. Growth sectors and more cyclicals will be interesting again later when growth picks up again starting from the second quarter”, concludes Fugnoli.
