Beyond Covid: the biggest trends to watch for investors
As consumer spending patterns change, human nature will determine which trends are likely to be temporary and which may have changed for good
It’s just over a year since our lives were abruptly disrupted by SA and the rest of the world going into various degrees of pandemic lockdown. While it now brings a wry smile to think we believed then that we’d be restricted for only a few weeks, it’s in our view more interesting to examine how people’s lives have changed across the globe over the past year. Which trends are likely to be temporary, and what may have changed for good? How does this impact our investments?
The experts say it takes people 62 days on average to form a habit, so given the duration of the lockdowns worldwide we’ve had ample time to adapt our behaviour. In many ways, in both our work and personal lives, our behaviour has indeed changed. However, we’ve yet to see whether some of these changes will be merely temporary or if they’ll become more long-lasting. Overall, our view is that human nature essentially tends to remain unaltered — the only permanent changes to society are therefore likely to be tho...
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