Month: February 2019

What’s next?

Posted on by Stefan Markus Kremeth

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen

I receive a fair number of messages asking about my view on the markets. As my regular readers all know, I still cannot foresee the future although I am trying hard but so far, I was totally unsuccessful.

However, if we take the core messages of my recent weekly mails about long-term investing into considerations and also what Mr. Andy Haeberli, Profond’s CIO, mentioned in last week’s interview, then – at least for me – there is not much room for investments outside the “real asset” bracket.

To make money with easy to understand, straight forward fixed income strategies seems difficult with current low interest rates. Either you accept elevated currency- or counterparty risks or you will not find decent yields on your fixed income investments. When it comes to real assets you may will have to accept higher volatility – as in equities and/or precious metals – but you get higher returns in the long run.

You may know, that we offer a cashflow based mandate for our private clients and while we cannot diversify those portfolio’s entire volatility away, we receive very decent cash returns on invested capital and interestingly enough, at least half of the companies whose equities we hold in those mandates, just announced dividend increases.

Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, what I want to say with this is, that if you are willing and capable of accepting volatility in your portfolio, you may appreciate rather stable cashflows on your invested capital and this should not to be neglected because the effect of compounding interests will help you to increase those cashflows even more (in theory exponentially) over time.

While I don’t know where markets or single investments are heading, I am confident that by following a strict investment process in seeking and harvesting positive cashflows, you may not get rich over night, but you will be able to steadily increase your capital over time.

There is no magic in this and crashes may occur at any moment. However most solid global companies keep paying stable dividends even during stock exchange crashes. This means if you do not have to sell a solid investment during a stock market crash and if you are patient enough to wait until stock markets recover, your loss potential is most probably going to be limited. However, it all comes down to picking the right stocks and this is hard work and involves a lot of research and number crunching.

As always, I encourage you to send me your feedback and/or questions but please don’t forget (instead of hitting the reply button) to send your messages to:
smk@incrementum.li

Many thanks, indeed!

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen I wish you a great day and weekend.
Kind regards,

Yours truly,

Stefan M. Kremeth
Wealth Management
Incrementum AG

Gold could surge to $1,500 by year-end and US QE is coming back ‘no question’

Posted on by Incrementum AG

With gold now trading at a 10-month high, IGTV’s Victoria Scholar spoke with Ronald-Peter Stoferle from Incrementum who said the precious metal could jump to $1,500 by year-end once we go past resistance at $1,360 and $1,380. Stoferle argues for a US recession as soon as 2019 with further quantitative easing (QE) from the central bank on its way ‘no question’. Meanwhile he says ‘silver should outperform gold’.

Interview with Mr. Andreas Haeberli, CIO of Profond

Posted on by Stefan Markus Kremeth

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen

As announced two weeks ago I was able to interview Mr. Andreas Haeberli, CIO of Profond Collective Foundation. Please find my questions with Andy’s answers for your convenience:

1) What is Profond’s investment goal?
We want to offer sustainably high benefits to our policy holders. When we invest, we therefore focus primarily on real values, i.e. equities and real estate. These asset classes enable us to generate above-average returns in the long term. With optimal diversification, we take risk parameters and financial stability into account.
2) What is your investment horizon?
Pension fund assets are invested over a very long period of around 60 years (40 years of gainful employment and around 20 years of pension entitlement). As a result, short- and medium-term financial markets fluctuations balance each other out well. Therefore, we are not influenced by short-term movements and short-term events in financial markets. We do not engage in any tactical investments or hedges. However, we generally hedge foreign currency risks for nominal values, real estate and infrastructure investments.
2) Where do you see the biggest challenge for a Swiss based pension fund manager today?
The current low level of interest rates presents major challenges to investors. Bonds are traded with a maturity yield of zero and negative interest must be paid on cash holdings. This leads to ever lower investment returns on investment funds. This low compound interest effect has a noticeable negative effect on fixed income investments in the long run.
3) hat are your favourite investments and why?
Long term, equities yield higher returns than bonds. This is shown, among other things, by a much-quoted study by Pictet. That is why we focus on equities and not on bonds. We also invest an above-average proportion in real estate. They are not directly dependent on stock market fluctuations and diversify our overall portfolio well. We also benefit from regular income (rental income). Thanks to these asset classes, we achieve a cash flow return of around 2.5% on the overall portfolio.
4) Are you working with consultants and if, why and if not, why not?
On a case-by-case basis, we draw on the knowledge of advisors in the selection of asset managers. We also call in pension fund experts for certain tasks. 
5) How are you investing your private money?

Basically, my private investment activity does not differ from my professional one. The only difference is that I invest a small part of my personal wealh on a short-term basis.

Many thanks, Andy, for your time and the insight!

As always, I encourage you to send me your feedback and/or questions but please don’t forget (instead of hitting the reply button) to send your messages to:

smk@incrementum.li

Many thanks, indeed!

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen I wish you a great day and weekend.
Kind regards,

Yours truly,

Stefan M. Kremeth
Wealth Management
Incrementum AG

Ronald-Peter Stöeferle: The Perfect Storm for Gold & Mining Stocks

Posted on by Ronald Stöferle

Ronald feels that we are in a perfect storm for gold as his inflation indicator began to rise this January. One should load up on inflation-sensitive currencies, mining equities, physical gold, and the commodity sector in general. The combination of monetary tightening and rising rates is going to lead to recessionary risks and the economic numbers show a dramatic cooling.

Time Stamp References:

1:40 – Perfect storm for gold is brewing.

3:00 – Recessionary risks are increasing.

3:40 – Federal Reserve monetary U-Turn.

5:30 – His long-term targets for gold.

6:50 – Central banks are buying.

7:30 – Institutional investors remain on the sidelines.

8:45 – Entering the second stage of the bull market.

10:30 – Recent gold and mining equities performance.

13:20 – Dedollarization is increasingly an important topic.

14:20 – US Dollar is rolling over.

Sociocultural issues meet economics

Posted on by Stefan Markus Kremeth

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen

Did you follow my advice and spend every morning 30 to 60 seconds thinking about something positive? If so, what was the effect?

Now, last week I gave you an insight into some of my global sociocultural points of view and proposed to publish an interview with a pension fund manager for this week. The interview was conducted but the time schedule was a bit aggressive and I am not quite ready to publish the interview yet. Hopefully by the end of next week I will be and may deliver on my promise.

I have been receiving very thoughtful and interesting feedback to my last weekly mail and thus today, would like to pick the feedback of two of my readers and share Masha’s and Anton’s thoughts with you.

When thinking of current global economic policies, Masha has a picture in her mind. It is the picture of a curved (concave and convex) mirror. The sort of thing you would see in amusement parks. When you stand in front of it, reality gets distorted. I quite like that metaphor and I totally see her point, only that instead of the mirror we have some of today’s media channels and research reports by banks and brokers.

Anton’s feedback was touching on three points.

Firstly on his statement that uninterrupted growth is not possible, something I would easily agree to, second he cited a quote by Hannah Arendt: “Politics is the professional representation of vested interests”, again I can’t really argue against that one and thirdly he mentioned that we cannot borrow our way to prosperity (how I love that one!) but rather that prosperity requires sacrifices – more specifically, to get something of value tomorrow (including a better life overall) we need to give up something today (time, sleep, money, etc.). This last statement is so true and the ones who know me well, will know that I have a serious problem with today’s culture of “instant gratification”. It just doesn’t work. I always use the same metaphor. If a farmer wants vegetables, he needs to prepare the grounds, saw the seeds and only after a while will see the first signs of germinating plants.

Same is obviously true for investments. People who expect return without giving the investment time to develop, shouldn’t really invest, at least that is what I think.

As always, I encourage you to send me your feedback but please don’t forget (instead of hitting the reply button) to send your messages to:

smk@incrementum.li

Many thanks, indeed!

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen I wish you a great day and weekend.

Kind regards,
Yours truly,

Stefan M. Kremeth
Wealth Management
Incrementum AG

Who hinders growth, hinders prosperity

Posted on by Stefan Markus Kremeth

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen

Long-term investing seen from a slightly different angle that was what my last weekly was all about. I received many questions for pension fund investment pros and am happy that my friend Andy Haeberli, Profond’s CIO, one of Switzerland’s largest collective foundations, agreed to be interviewed by me. I will hopefully be able to do the interview next week and publish it in my next edition of “Stefan’s weekly”.

Today I would like to have a look at what politics can do to help their people to prosper. I am a firm believer of the vision that politicians should primarily act in the public’s interest, however I do get the impression that some of them are primarily acting in their own interest.

First of all I determine that 10 years after the great financial crisis the global economy doesn’t look all that bad. No matter what you hear or see, it is a fact that GDP in most countries is higher and unemployment lower than before the great financial crisis. Total debt on the other side went up massively but so far did not hit economies with high inflation rates as foreseen wrongly by so many (including me).

During and after the great financial crisis, governments and central banks across the globe worked together and made it possible that we didn’t fall into a deep, deep recession followed by hyper-inflation. I believe one of the success factors was the common vision of implementing concentrated and collective action to prevent worse.

What changed in the last roughly two to years? There is this feeling of negativity and that sound of negativity and you know what? I don’t like that sound of negativity! This is the sound of populists to the right and of populists to the left and it can’t be expected to lead to anything positive! Some of those people would like to bring back “the good old days”, why? Because these were the days when children died of influenza or days of no cancer treatment or days of wars in Europe or days of countries without voting rights for women or days of exclusion of minorities, days of apartheid, days of no central heating, etc, this can’t be the goal.

Anyway, I believe that weak politicians take weak decisions and I believe that protectionism represents a risk to global economic prosperity and I believe that we have to settle for cultural and socio-economic adaptation, because not even the most powerful governments and/or central banks can perform well in a socio-economic vacuum and I believe our political leaders and also the general public need to start immediately to detoxify the current public political discourse. This is important because this negativity hinders growth and thus prosperity. It is our responsibility to elect the political leaders that can do the job.

What is your opinion?

Ladies and Gentlemen, please try one thing for yourself and please let me know if it did have an effect on you. Please spend every morning right after getting up 30 to 60 seconds thinking about something positive or about various positive things. As always, I encourage you to send me your feedback but please don’t forget (instead of hitting the reply button) to send your messages to:

smk@incrementum.li

Many thanks, indeed!

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen I wish you a great day and weekend.

Kind regards,
Yours truly,

Stefan M. Kremeth
Wealth Management
Incrementum AG