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Patience is essential to daily life and even more so if you are parents to young kids. When I was a child, I was often told to “be patient”, which meant staying calm in the face of delay, frustration or adversity. We all have many opportunities in life to practice this virtue; being stuck in traffic, the ups and down of parenthood, or indeed, managing one’s investments. By understanding the importance of having patience, we can maintain our focus on our long-term goals, and not let short term noise push us into taking unnecessary action. Time in the market is better than timing the market, as they say, as it allows investors to benefit from the power of compounding, which Albert Einstein once referred to as the 8th wonder of the world.

What is it worth then? This is a question investors should be asking themselves all the time. However, the true answer is not always obvious. There are many ways to approach it and there is of course an easy “short cut” to establishing an answer; the stock market price. However, relying on such a public pricing mechanism implies a high level of faith on efficient markets and to believe there is no such thing as “the madness of crowds”.

“As violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.” Ronald Reagan’s caricature of inflation in 1978 reflects a degree of fear at the time about this pernicious thief that is largely absent amongst today’s policymakers. After several decades of low inflation, policymakers and investors have potentially become too complacent about the risks of higher inflation. Although there remains a wide range of potential outcomes in the coming years, we see a return of higher inflation as the biggest risk factor in markets; it would erode purchasing power, damage the real value of savings and wealth, and would have far-reaching implications for the construction of portfolios.

When I raise the issue of the importance of macro, I tend to get the same responses, which fall into two categories:

1. It can’t be done; no one has a good record predicting macroeconomic variables like GDP growth.
2. Why bother? Even if you had perfect foresight of what these variables were going to be, you wouldn’t be able to predict the market’s reaction.