As we wake to the news of a significant cabinet reshuffle by Mr Zuma and that the rand has lost another 4% on the news, there will be a tendency to panic. Now is not the time for knee-jerk reactions. The market will do that for you. Like a pendulum, it will overshoot as people attempt to digest and predict the future consequences of the moves.
You are a long-term investor and should not be swayed by short term noise – even if it is a very loud noise. Today will most likely be horrible from a market and currency point of view but over the next few weeks and months we will make sense of it and there will be some positives that come out of this – don’t do anything in a panic. It is too late to take that money offshore (today) and it is too late to sell your portfolio to try to get out of the market.
One of my favourite lines that we often get to use is from the movie “Mickey Blue Eyes” which stars Hugh Grant as the boyfriend whose prospective father-in-law is a gangster boss. Grant’s character is very proper and speaks with a real hot potato in his mouth. The father wants to introduce him to his gangster friends but cant have him speak with that accent and so he tries to teach him to speak like a mobster…about the only thing he gets right is the line “forget about it” which sounds more like “fur ged abowd did”.
I am not advocating a reckless negligence of your finances but I recommending that if you are an investor (that implies that you are in it for the long haul) and you have an investment plan/strategy in place then you need to learn to do the “Micky Blue Eyes” with your funds and “fur ged abowd did” (for now).
