CEO editorial – Quarter 4 2023

Gary Mockler
Group Chief Executive Officer

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CEO Editorial

2024 welcomes us with many global macro events that could affect our investments.  As you’ve probably already read, we are wishing for a ‘boring’ investment year.

Several thought leadership articles that I reviewed for this quarter’s Trendline were penned by some of our younger professional staff.  It was interesting to see their take on savings and investments, and whilst still focussed on long-term objectives (i.e. retirement), their chosen topics focussed on financial goals much earlier in an investor’s life.

Adopting a pragmatic mindset of investment strategies and specifically targeting children’s education are probably not topics on the minds of investors either in their retirement or close to it, though they remain important topics for so many of our clients.  I found this refreshing and it acted as a timeous reminder that so many of GTC’s clients are in the early phases of their wealth creation.  We have in the past perhaps focussed on the needs, the psychology, and the investment strategies of investors who have already achieved most of the accumulation phase and are more focussed on wealth maintenance and the providing of income.

A persistent theme from GTC over the last number of years has been to include retirement funding as a far more integral component of an investor’s personal financial planning. Government too has endorsed this thinking with some profound changes to legislation (Section 36 of the Pension Funds Act) in 2018.

Ensuring that young adults begin their working lives with a solid foundation as regards their wealth creation is important.

These lessons learnt stand one in good stead the rest of one’s investment career.

We never stop learning.