Damien Klassen is the Head of Investments at Nucleus Wealth, a Melbourne-based funds management and advice firm. He joined Owen Rask on The Australian Investors Podcast.
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Some market commentators are calling Damien ‘the investor who saw COVID-19 coming’ and are — perhaps rightly so.
Damien before and know him as a very humble and intelligent investor who oversees the management of core portfolios in local and global shares, direct bonds and cash.
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You’ll find the full interview with Damien below. Owen has also included some takeaways further down the page.
Owen’s key takeaways:
- Shares, property and bonds were already overpriced leading into the crisis. For example, he believed shares were priced 30% above their historical average. This is a view I tend to agree with (hence why Rask Invest had so much cash pre-COVID-19).
- So far, the Australian Government’s stimulus measures have been blunt and will likely prove to be ineffective because they are incentivising the wrong behaviour.
- Australian banks and banking stocks will find it very difficult to return to their former glory as the RBA tries to manage the yield curve such that banks can remain profitable and interest rates can be accommodative to consumers and businesses.
- Australian house prices are facing a very grim few months.
- Damien is waiting to see if/when credit markets unlock before aggressively putting money back into the market. That said…
- Damien already has a long list of high-quality companies he is working through, analysing them from a quantitative perspective, with a view to quality and value.
Connect with Damien today