Off the beaten track: Investing in sports

[SINGAPORE] The financial world loves a good metaphor. Some popular ones include “a rising tide lifts all ships”, and “don’t try to catch a falling knife”. They are pithy ways to get one’s point across but can sometimes fail to capture the nuances. A rising tide might lift all ships, but some ships are more buoyant than others.

The ongoing trade war and the expected economic downturn is one such example. Yes, there will be tariff-related pains, but there are spots of brightness. Markets are betting on uncertainty amid US President Donald Trump’s volatile, solipsistic approach to policymaking. Gold surged in April as the Vix index, a measure of expected market volatility, saw its largest spike since the pandemic.

Beyond looking at the winners and losers of this chaos, we also consider what can bulwark a portfolio.