Top South African money managers warned at the Bloomberg Africa Business Summit that cash is a poor place to hold assets as global interest rates sit at multi-year lows and are seen on a downward trajectory, reducing real returns. Alexandra Nortier, co-head of wealth management at Investec’s wealth and investment unit, said investors should instead look to emerging markets for better opportunities, implying a tactical shift toward higher-yielding, growth-oriented exposures amid low-rate conditions.
Alexandra Nortier, co-head of wealth management at Investec’s wealth and investment unit, told the inaugural Bloomberg Africa Business Summit in Johannesburg that cash is a poor place to hold assets because global interest rates are at multi-year lows and are viewed as being on a downward trajectory. That explicit view frames cash as offering unattractive real returns in the current macro regime and signals a tactical push away from liquidity buffers toward yield and growth sources. Speakers at the summit urged investors to look to emerging markets for opportunities, implying a reallocation toward higher-yielding or growth-oriented EM exposures rather than domestic cash holdings. The accompanying signals classify the tone as risk-on and mildly positive with a modest market-impact score (0.25), suggesting market participants may incrementally increase EM positioning but not trigger a large systemic move immediately. Investors should treat this as a thematic prompt rather than a hard call: lower global rates reduce the opportunity cost of risk assets, but reallocating from cash to EMs requires active implementation choices and attention to volatility, currency moves and manager selection. Monitoring interest-rate direction remains the primary trigger to scale exposure up or down given the analysis provided at the summit.
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mildly positive
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