On an ‘exciting inflection point’ for investors, an open mind about crypto and his Jane Austen pride and prejudices
In our regular video series, we interview the wealth sector’s key decision-makers to discover how they think about life, both within the world of investment and beyond it; what brought them into the business and what keeps them here; and what makes them and their companies tick
The incoming Trump administration represents an “exciting inflection point” for investors, believes Peter Sleep, investment director at Callanish. Talking with Wealthwise editorial director Julian Marr in the above video, Sleep expects the coming four years in the US to be “a complete change with the past”. “If you look at the situation in France and possibly the UK today, the old liberal consensus has perhaps had 25 years of failure behind it,” he argues. “I am thinking of things like nation-building in Iraq, Brexit, the eurozone crisis and our parlous financial situation at the moment.
What they call the ‘Overton window’ of what is politically acceptable to the mainstream is shifting and it is shifting hugely – more, perhaps, than I have known at any time in my life.”
“So we need a change and I think we are going to have one now in the US – and it is going to reverberate around the world. What they call the ‘Overton window’ of what is politically acceptable to the mainstream is shifting and it is shifting hugely – more, perhaps, than I have known at any time in my life. And I think that is what is going to be really exciting over the next four or five years.”
An open mind
Later on in the chat, “The obvious one is crypto” is the somewhat unexpected response to a question on the investments that have caught Sleep’s eye beyond the more traditional asset classes of cash, bonds and equities. “There is a ‘rock star’ quant at BlackRock called Andrew Ang and he wrote a paper about two years ago, looking at what sort of allocation you should have to crypto,” he elaborates.
“Obviously the paper was experimental but it was an attempt – a very good attempt – at trying to treat crypto as an asset. And his conclusion was between 1% and 3% – and I think there is some credibility to that research and I am prepared to keep an open mind and potentially put it in my own personal portfolio. Of course, we will have to wait to see how the regulator feels about it in due course.”
You can view the whole video by clicking on the picture above, while the timecodes for individual questions are:
00.00: Introduction
00.49: What excites you about the current investment outlook? What worries you?
03.12: What do you most look for in an individual investment? What constitute ‘red flags’?
04.45: To what degree should professional investors be thinking beyond so-called ‘traditional’ investments? Towards what?
06.20: What drives your approach to client communications? Should professional investors aim to attract the ‘right’ type of client?
07.48: What was your path into investment – and, if you hadn’t taken it, what do you think you would be doing now?
09.40: What was the biggest investment mistake you are prepared to admit to – and what did you learn from it?
10.30: What are your best and worst-case scenarios for the future of wealth in the UK?
12.02: Two ‘Choice Words’ recommendations, please – one a book; one a free choice?
