My World: June 2021…

This is part of a series of articles where our contributors describe how they think things will look a year from now.

When weighing up potential new investments, pandemic resilience will be a key valuation factor

During probably too many years in the investment sector, I have witnessed several returns to business as usual when permanent disruption had been anticipated. The 1987 stock market crash, the dot-com fallout in the early 2000s, and the 2008-09 global financial crisis – did any of them fundamentally change my working life? Not that I can remember. Mesmerising though each apparently seismic moment was, the familiar routines of working life returned more quickly than anyone expected.

Is the covid-19 pandemic any different? Is there now a ‘new normal’? Or will this solitary, virtual, laptop-based existence be a faded memory by June 2021? Will Zoomposiums, quarantinis and blue Skype thinking – indeed, all ‘lockdown lingo’ – be long forgotten? Or (unlike after 1987, 2000 or 2008-09) will working life never be quite the same? And how might covid-19 have affected our approach to investing?