Month: December 2021

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

Many thanks for all your great comments and for sharing your views and valuable thoughts with me throughout the year. Sometimes I am almost overwhelmed with messages and I might not always be able to reply to all of them, which I deeply regret. I still have many links to speeches and videos, sent by readers that I so far was unable to consult. Yet I hope to find the time during the festive season to go through them and get back to you.

Now, there will be one more Stefan’s weekly before the year-end, however not next week but rather between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

I already wish a Merry Christmas to you and your beloved ones and hope you will have some peaceful and relaxed days ahead of you.

At Incrementum we will enjoy our Staff Christmas Lunch today and I am very much looking forward to it!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I wish you an excellent start to the day, a wonderful weekend, and above all, good health!

Yours truly,

Stefan M. Kremeth
Wealth Management
Incrementum AG – we love managing assets

Tel.: +423 237 26 60
Cell: +41 79 303 48 39
Im alten Riet 102
9494 Schaan/Liechtenstein
Mail: smk@incrementum.li

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

This year’s year-end competition still shows an interesting picture, and since we are going quickly towards the year-end, we should look at where we are standing.

Extremes

As you will see, the volatility in the individual underlying’s market prices is somewhat represented in the spread between the highest and lowest of your estimates for gold, Bitcoin and the S&P 500, and it also shows that forecasting is not so obvious.

Gold

The range in gold still stretches from USD 1’650 to USD 2’066, with roughly half of the estimates hovering around 1’850. Thus, my readers seem not too bullish on gold but slightly optimistic. However, the current market price of gold stands at USD 1’775 and is a big disappointment. For the first time in decades, we see something like inflation and gold is going down. So far, our assumptions were utterly wrong, and this is a major blow. Nevertheless, gold has proven to be an excellent inflation hedge in the long term, and this is why I do not want to give up on it just now.

Bitcoin

The range of your estimates for Bitcoin stretches from USD 23’000 to USD 123’000. Now, for Bitcoin, the picture is different from gold. So far, more than half of the estimates still lie above USD 70’000, which shows my readers’ great confidence for higher prices in Bitcoin, and so far, my readers have been pretty close to reality with their estimates. However, Bitcoin got hit badly last weekend, and I personally believe this shows that an asset class with no intrinsic value is entirely dependent on its buyer’s confidence.

S&P 500

The estimated range in the S&P 500 stretches from USD 3’835 to USD 5’100. Almost two-thirds of the estimates came in lower than today’s market price, and therefore the rest came in at above current prices. This is interesting,especially as this year again, the S&P 500 performed very well. However, the high-performance drivers came from a limited amount of companies.

Conclusion

Three more weeks to go and with inflation at the highest levels in more or less ten years, gold not living up to its expectations this year, Bitcoin almost seems like the new inflation hedge; however, after last weekend’s cryptocurrency crash, I am asking myself if cryptos offer a sustainable inflation hedge. But now, Ladies and Gentlemen, for over 100 years, a mixed basket of equities offered outstanding performance and inflation hedge; maybe it is time to take this consideration in the equation?

Ladies and Gentlemen

As always, please share your opinion with me, but please do not forget (instead of hitting the reply button) to send your messages to:
smk@incrementum.li

Many thanks, indeed!

I wish you an excellent start to the day, a wonderful weekend, and above all, good health!

Yours truly,

Stefan M. Kremeth
Wealth Management
Incrementum AG – we love managing assets

Tel.: +423 237 26 60
Cell: +41 79 303 48 39
Im alten Riet 102
9494 Schaan/Liechtenstein
Mail: smk@incrementum.li

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

There are probably three simple reasons that make us think, communicate, act and behave the way we do. Now, I know, this may seem somewhat simplistic and I agree, it is but not without purpose.

Reason Number one – Simplification

Most people can not and/or do not want to spend enough time understanding complex topics. Even more so, if complex issues do not offer immediate and simple solutions because maybe there are just no such simple solutions readily available at any given moment, but instead imaginably a range of scenarios at the most. In such moments, people may be attracted to simplified reasoning perhaps offered by politicians, bloggers, religion, or in financial markets, investment gurus.

You know, in financial markets (but definitely not only in financial markets), absolutely nothing is ever crystal clear; no matter what one thinks and/or believes, investment decisions always require a certain humbleness and the acceptance of unknowns. However, financial markets have a self-regulating mechanism. If market participants push things too far, which at times they tend to do, it is usually followed by a (significant) correction.

Reason Number two – Ego

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, our ego makes it so difficult for us to admit to having missed a point, been wrong, change our views, overturn a decision and even worse, admit to peers, family, and friends to have made a mistake. We are just humans and want to shine, be successful, and admired. Fair enough! And you know what?

Reason Number three – Social Context

And yes, the regular Stefan’s weekly readers would not be surprised to notice that I am once again an advocate of this view I feel urged to stress again and again. Social context influences our thinking, communicating, acting, and behaving big time, more than most people may realise.

Awareness

I think it is challenging to change the way we think, communicate, act and behave. However, if we are aware of why we think, communicate, act and behave the way we do, we perhaps can reach a point where we can somewhat more easily tolerate and respect other people’s thoughts and views, but also take a step towards becoming less stubborn on views and issues that make our lives miserable.

Ladies and Gentlemen

As always, please share your opinion with me, but please do not forget (instead of hitting the reply button) to send your messages to:
smk@incrementum.li

Many thanks, indeed!

I wish you an excellent start to the day, a wonderful weekend, and above all, good health!

Yours truly,

Stefan M. Kremeth
Wealth Management
Incrementum AG – we love managing assets

Tel.: +423 237 26 60
Cell: +41 79 303 48 39
Im alten Riet 102
9494 Schaan/Liechtenstein
Mail: smk@incrementum.li