At Forrest Private Wealth, our investment philosophy underpins our financial planning advice, which ensures our client’s wealth benefits from long-term exposure to equity markets. We believe holding a well-diversified portfolio of predominantly dividend-paying businesses over a long-term period is essential in financial planning for wealth accumulation and, ultimately, retirement planning.
By following our retirement planning process, a Forrest Private Wealth financial planner stays true to their investment advice, ignoring the noise and pressures of the market to provide their clients with a stress-free retirement. At Forrest Private Wealth, our financial planners capitalise on an investment philosophy that provides predictable income streams from equity markets, setting clients up for their desired retirement.
Long Term Portfolio
After a tough year-end, markets bounced back in January, giving 2025 a strong start. Our Long portfolio benefited from this, delivering solid gains for the month.
The big picture remains steady—interest rates, inflation, and economic growth continue to shape markets. Inflation is slowing, which is a positive sign, and there’s growing confidence that interest rates have peaked. Locally, we’ve already seen a rate cut in February, providing further support for investment returns. This has been particularly encouraging for smaller and quality growth businesses, which have faced a challenging 18 to 24 months.
Markets will always have ups and downs, but our guiding principle remains staying invested and having concentrated exposure to strong, well-managed businesses. With conditions improving, we’re cautiously optimistic about the year ahead.
Short Term Portfolio
January offered an early glimpse into the risks and themes that could define a Trump 2.0 presidency. While inflation is gradually easing, persistent pressures in services and housing are keeping it above central bank targets. Uncertainty around tariffs is adding another layer of complexity to the interest rate outlook, with some central banks opting to hold rates steady as a precaution. On a positive note, it appears that interest rates have peaked.
Against this backdrop, we continue to monitor our Short SMA portfolio closely, maintaining a positive outlook for credit markets this calendar year. With rates stabilising and economic conditions gradually improving, we see opportunities in credit as spreads remain attractive and fundamentals largely supportive.
Micro Cap Portfolio
The start of 2025 has been eventful to say the least! Canada’s Prime Minister stepped down, British government bonds suffered their steepest decline since 2008, December U.S. non-farm payroll report heightened fears of an overheated economy, while oil prices surged to their highest levels since August. By the end of the month it felt like this was in the background as Trump and Chinese built DeepSeek AI dominated the headlines.
Despite the mixed headlines, markets were buoyant and the new year started well with a 4.08% return in the Micro portfolio for January.
Forrest Private Wealth’s discipline in providing financial planning, retirement planning, and wealth management services to its clients allows our clients to benefit from years of experience providing financial advice through major impacts to equity markets where staying the course has helped them.
Forrest Private Wealth has a dedicated team of financial planners and support staff providing clients with peace of mind in working towards and achieving their life goals.