Roundtable – Calling the right shots in the new normal

VIR's editor-in-chief Le Trong Minh speaking at the Roundtable

Amid the unpredictable pandemic, which has created an unprecedented financial crisis, global markets are near-impossible to predict. While some industries have been hit hard such as entertainment and tourism, others might take off faster again as soon as social distancing measures are eased around the world.

According to VIR's editor-in-chief Le Trong Minh, if a vaccine preventing COVID-19 is not found and released, the pandemic will continue to devastate economies, so all organisations and individual investors need to adjust their plans.

"Investment will be unpredictable and drop severely in all sectors. Investment and business opportunities are reducing because risks are increasing," said Minh.

"Will investment go into traditional channels like property with expectations of recovery in near future, or will it go to the security market to get in on the action of the rare public companies that have managed to achieve positive business results during the pandemic? Or will investors rather go for safe channels like gold and the safest in saving books/deposit certificates with reducing interest rates? It is entirely possible they will come up with some very new investment channels," Minh noted.

Discussing new emerging investment channels like Forex and e-currency, Thai Viet Dung, representative of international fintech company Exness said that Forex is a decentralised marketplace for trading various currencies where purchase and sell actions can be affected in real-time.

"Forex trading is not necessarily a physical exchange, it can be conducted through a broker – a forex platform or the internet. The forex market can generate high profits with small original investment, but investors need to be very good at financial and chart analysis," said Dung.

He also alerted investors to make careful research before jumping in because there are many fraudulent Forex exchanges out there.

"Apart from that, cryptocurrencies which have been present for a long time over the world, created by blockchain technology on computers but has only become popular in Vietnam recently. These currencies could yield high returns for investors, as Bitcoin – the first cryptocurrency in the world appreciated, taking others along such as Ripple, Litecoin, or Ethereum. Several e-currencies were among the most profitable channels last year. With the very high security of blockchain, even governments and big corporations over the world have interested in it."