A.I.M. Users Bulletin Board

[ls7550]

Hi Tom

A while back you discussed having Investments, Land and Gold

Yes, the ancient Talmud advocated choice. Owning a home avoids having to find/pay rent to others. Diversifying across domestic (GBP), primary reserve (US$) and global (gold) currencies into three major assets (land, stocks, commodity). Last year, for a UK (GBP) investor, house prices relatively unchanged, gold +20%, stocks +14%. This year ... who knows - being hopeful that Covid vaccines and treatments reduce the virus to being much less 'critical'. As houses are relatively illiquid including some domestic REIT like holdings facilitates easier topping up/reducing when rebalancing back to near equal weights once/year, so given both stock and gold gains GBP/REIT type assets having been expanded as part of year end rebalancing.

5 million+ now have had their first jab over here, but now nearing 100K deaths. Given the US has around 5x the population size, proportioned that's like 25 million jabbed, 500K deaths in US scale. A concern is that new strains are being discovered that mostly so far the vaccines also partially protects against, however there is now talk of yet other strains where the vaccine may be ineffective and that are more aggressive. So may not be the entering of a post-covid phase. The Spanish flu a little over a century ago was a multi-year/phases issue, where the second wave across a 4 year period saw a rise from similar levels to the current covid levels of mortality, up to a 30% mortality rate and was a much more a aggressive/unpleasant experience (but kinder in the respect that some only suffered for less than a day). Praying that we don't ensure such a outcome, but worryingly feels that that could be on the books. Perhaps nature expressing its issue with a global human population of over 8Bn.

Regards.

Clive.