Hope you don’t think I’ve lost my mind

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I am well known for slamming the media for being negative, with just cause I believe.

However after viewing the news headlines this morning I think for the first time the media is in positive “la-la” land with many of the comments around the economy and property today.

I spent several hours yesterday catching up with the latest US data and scenarios, and they are only at the beginning of their carnage. This means sadly, so are we. We may not be as badly hit, but talk of an early recovery etc. is just plain nonsense I’m afraid.

Not one of us can accurately predict the future because we are in a situation currently that we have never seen before, and will most likely never see this in our lifetimes again.

Now I’m not going all doom and gloom on you, I don’t mean that, I’m simply saying that this is a time for reality. This is a time to be very careful and not predict a recovery until we see some definite evidence of it.

In a normal world we want to try and predict the cycles and take advantage of getting in early with a recovery. But the stakes are too high this time. The risk of an ongoing meltdown is just too great to be aggressive in my opinion.

So there you go, rant over. Ignore some of today’s media comments like Tony Alexander’s

“He believes real estate sales have probably almost reached their weakest level, and activity is likely to fluctuate and start moving up before the end of the year.”

This flies in the face of every leading indicator not just in NZ but globally.

So stay safe, be careful, calculate risks carefully and be conservative for a season. Property rocks as an asset class and wealth creation vehicle but a wooden horse rocks as well and that ain’t goin nowhere!!