“There Is No Alternative”

by Michael Matthews, Investment Director at Investec Wealth & Investment UK
 
Outlook
“There is no alternative” was a phrase originally coined by Herbert Spencer, a Victorian philosopher, to defend the merits of capitalism and free markets against their critics. More famously, it became as “TINA” the soubriquet of Margaret Thatcher. Today it is widely used within portfolio management to justify holding assets that seem more risky than investors would wish them to be. The alternative to holding those assets is to own sovereign bonds or sit in cash, guaranteed not to give you any return except of your capital and, even then, without any compensation for inflation in the interim.
It can equally be applied to the dilemma facing the global authorities currently. In the belief that medical science will design a vaccine that works effectively and can be manufactured in sufficient scale worldwide within the not too distant future (but in our view unlikely to be less than nine months b...