“He called the Crash.” MB Fund’s Damien Klassen feature interview

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| 56 comments

MB Fund’s Head of Investments Damien Klassen was featured in a Fund Manager Q&A today with Livewire Markets focused on Nucleus having called the possibility of Coronavirus causing widespead crashes in January when there were just 400 cases. Livewire note what’s happened since:

In just 9 weeks, those 400 cases have exploded to over 400,000 cases and nearly 20,000 deaths globally, leading to economic disruptions that have decimated markets worldwide and unleashed extreme levels of volatility.

Topics include:

  • How bad could it get for Australia?
  • Why did you move to cash?
  • How does it play out from here?
  • How might the banks fare?
  • What’s the best and worst-case for residential property?
  • What will show it’s time to buy?
  • What sectors will look good for the recovery?
  • What will you buy when it’s time..?

Check out the full interview below

Damien Klassen is Head of Investments at the Macrobusiness Fund, which is powered by Nucleus Wealth.

The information on this blog contains general information and does not take into account your personal objectives, financial situation or needs. Past performance is not an indication of future performance. Damien Klassen is an authorised representative of Nucleus Wealth Management, a Corporate Authorised Representative of Nucleus Advice Pty Ltd – AFSL 515796.

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Comments

  6. bendy wire

    my question is, who the Fck is buying all the steel right now?? or is it just piling up in China?

  7. China PlateMEMBER

    look at that ASX glide slope it could still finish in the red by the end of the day. lovely

  8. The Penske FileMEMBER

    Well done. I like the stock analogy of a sock that has dropped 90% being a stock that has dropped 80% and then halved…. looking at Prospa. No mention of Bitcoin?…. asking for a friend.

  9. codeazureMEMBER

    It’s good to see recognition of what you’ve achieved. Glad I’m with Nucleus.

    Yesterday, someone who is in an industry fund asked me (with a pained expression) “Have you looked at your super account recently?”. I said “Yeah, looks pretty good”

    I don’t care that much if my fund doesn’t go up as much as some others in good times as long as it’s good enough. But now, right now, is where the rubber meets the road… This is when it really matters who you choose to invest with.

  10. myne

    Damien, some basic thoughts.

    * You seem quite frank and open – which is great.
    * Even my non-finance partner who wasn’t listening was grabbed and sniffed in shock by the comment on the timeframes and the dead piling up. “It’ll burn through your population quickly” ~9:10 😮
    * One negative to balance it out a bit. “Um” would be ideal to work on.

  14. Stewie GriffinMEMBER

    Well done – despite the horrendous circumstances giving rise to the accolades, this awesome achievement in wealth preservation is something to be rightfully proud of. I’ve never seen it done before, and in the face of such extreme circumstances. Again, well done.

  17. yetidarkoMEMBER

    Everyone in the game should know the rule. It’s not about being wrong or right it’s about how much money you make

  18. squirell

    Well done. But to be fair, my aus super balanced fund is down 8pct for the year from 1/07/19. Hardly end of the world scenario especially given previous years. I guess currency drop shields international share losses and some of the fund is in cash and bonds anyway. Maybe pop the champagne in 10 years.

  19. LSWCHPMEMBER

    Nice work Damien.

    My Super is down 4% in the greatest financial debacle of the last 100 years and the majority of my life savings outside super in the MB fund is also doing OK. I’m about 3.5% up for the year. How good is that?

    My partner, on the other hand…not so much.

    My thinking over the last 8 or 9 years has been greatly influenced by the MB crew, and I’m about $170K up as a result.

    My hat is off to you brother. The beers are on me at the next next Canberra roadshow.

  21. LukeMEMBER

    Only if your sign up process actually verified my address using my drivers license. Rather it having the option but not really working like it should. Had to do all this other random stuff that I gave up moving across.

    My Super has been slammed since. 40 years left of me in the workforce to recover these losses.

    • innocent bystanderMEMBER

      drivers licence validation worked for me. Might depend on your State? or other slight mismatch eg name/address spelling format. Or just the time of day, systems up etc

    • Damien KlassenMEMBER

      Sorry – not all states give access to the address via license. You can take a picture of your drivers licence or utility or phone or internet bill and upload it. 1300 623 863 if you are having any issues.

  22. JaponMEMBER

    I’m astounded at the bounce of the last days
    Is this the recovery and one should be buying in or is this a bear trap?

  25. mike mb

    2 things need to happen.

    1. All of the mandated super – $2.2 trillion or what’s left of it needs to be handed back.
    This 🇨🇳ChinaVirus🦠 is going to full pandemic and eventually everyone infected. Even at the slowest rate in infected doubling every 10 days that’s 5 months until almost everyone in Australia is infected.
    With over 2 million needing intensive care / ICU, with 600,000 dead & another 1.4 million seriously damaged / affected.
    A $10k mandated super withdrawal limit is only going to last 2 months for most people.
    Hand it all back.
    -/-

    2. Australia needs to urgently remove all non citizens.
    That includes the immediate cancellation of all foreign student & partner visas and send them back.
    Forced repatriation.
    -/-
    1 million Australian citizens were ‘made unemployed’ in the last 2 weeks. Most of who have never claimed welfare in their lives.

    This ChinaVirus – allowed in by Morrison, aided & abetted by our totally incompetent health officials, migration agents, corrupted Universities etc – the virus is now spreading like myxomatosis thru a paddock of rabbit burrows.

    🇨🇳🦠 – XImatosis.

    And in 2 months or so when a couple of million Australian citizens infected and they are trying to get health care, we can not afford the luxury of also providing health care & services to this non citizen migrant overburden..

    Current situation.
    4.5 million non Australian non citizens.
    Yep..
    4 million or 87% in just Sydney or Melbourne alone in vast fetid unassimilated migrant slums.

    You can argue all you like, but facts are they are foreign born non Australian foreign nationals.

    Most (eg the Chinese and Indians) are on a sole Chinese or Indian passport.

    A long standing economic, social & now a bio-security risk.

    A 4.5 million third world useless ‘Overshoot’ – from decades of broken border controls & our totally corrupted visa system.

    🔻1.9 million third world Temporary Residents (TR) on pretext visas..
    (835,000 foreign student / partners, 270,000 so called protection visas,
    260,000 so called working holiday,
    170,000 so called skilled or partners & so on)

    All here only to steal an Australian job, to live & work in a foreign criminal run black market sub economy, to participate in illegal work, vice, money laundering.

    To repay their loan debt to a foreign agent procurer, to send back remittances, to churn their Visas & extend their stay, to snag a PR and to sponsor in more third world unskilled & useless as an additional social & economic burden to Australia.
    A long standing social & economic risk.
    Most with no real health care coverage.
    Now a bio security and health care capacity risk.

    Universities & schools shut down.
    Skilled cooks & hairdressers but no job now
    Sponsored but no jobs now
    Regional & rural but no jobs now
    Now they are competing with newly unemployed Australians for whatever jobs are left.
    The new poor & soon to be homeless Australians along with this migrant overburden with no income & can’t oay the rent, already spilling out onto the streets.

    These 1.9 million non Australians TR will absolutely overload our health care system.

    THEY ARE CHINA, INDIA, NEPAL, BANGLADESH, PAKISTAN, MALAYSIA, THAILAND’s etc problem.

    Foreign Nationals.

    The basis of their visa no longer exists.
    Cancel all their visas and start the forced repatriation.

    🔻Then we have another 670,000 so called ‘NZ SCV’ but 40% are non Zealand born third world unskilled Asians & Indians trafficked into Australia via NZ with the NZ passport stamp..
    Again no real health care cover.
    The non NZ born should never have been allowed into Australia in what was intended to be a program for Australian & NZ born citizens.
    SEND THEM ALL BACK.
    THEY ARE NEW ZEALAND’s PROBLEM.

    🔻Then add on another 1.9 million third world unskilled migrant PR – including over a million being mostly old mainland born Chinese or Indian etc Nationals sole passport holders here as parasites on our welfare & healthcare.
    All non Australians. Non citizens.
    Why should they get Centrelink or Medicare?
    They are FOREIGN NATIONALS.
    Non Australian citizens.
    Second stage clean out after the TR & NZ SCV.
    The PR Medicare & Centrelink should be downgraded (so Australia citizens are given priority) or denied.
    And the virus pandemic a good reason to cancel their PR & send them back.
    -/-
    And that’s 4.5 million to be cleaned out.
    Non citizens. Foreign nationals.

    ▫️Restoring over 2.5 million jobs back to Australians.

    ▫️Restoring over 900,000 ex Australian dwellings back to Australians.

    Our jobs, housing, our hospitals and health care & social welfare capacity directed only to Australian citizens in this 🇨🇳ChinaVirus🦠pandemic.

      • Lenny Hayes for PMMEMBER

        Handing all the Super back will just go straight into housing and…….

        Hmm you may be into something here

    • Pessimist

      Neither the Chinese nor the Indians/ Nepalis are at fault here Mike.Your country is broken and corrupt to the core.You need to create your own reality!There is no use crying on forums like this.Go out and do what you can to rectify the situation!

      • mike mb

        I agree with that.
        We can’t blame the 4.5 million third world migrant parasite swill for us (Australia) letting them in.

        This third world migrant detritus, carefully selected from the bottom of the barrel from the slums and rural areas of the third world… in who could best lie, cheat & steal, or be saleable in vice.

        Their misfits, petty criminals, unemployable, abandoned south East Asian mothers & north Asian end of life vice workers & pimps, Bangla, Pak, Indo & Middle Eastern jihadi / an entire 1.1 million Chinese Hukou internally illegal underclass, ($Aud 2k or what was 10k¥ in Guangzhou buys a elderly Chinese hukou internal illegal an Australian PR & free Centrelink & Medicare..)

        Oh yes – they all did pay bribes, got willingly trafficked via an agent procurer, on a fake visa pretext, with fake funds..
        and they all willingly lied, cheated, fake health checks, to exploit nonsense visas, to willingly steal Australian jobs in visa breach..
        And they all lived illegally in foreign criminal run cash in hand bunk share, to then go to the AAT to extend their stay, or to exploit our Medicare & welfare with fake identity or borrowed cards.
        Nope,,we can’t blame them at all.
        It’s all our own fault.
        Australia allowed them to do that.

        • Janet

          If you had nothing and no future – you’d do exactly the same. The alternative is to die in whichever is the closest gutter and hope there is some value in your carcass to the dogs that will devour what pitiful amount of material is left.
          Before you’d get to that stage you’d lie, cheat and steal. Any of us would.
          Should it have been kept at bay? That’s a moral question with no right answer, but for whatever it is, it’s here now, and dealing with it is all we can do.

          • boomengineeringMEMBER

            Mike Australia has always been a dumping ground for the low life’s of the world since the convict settlement of 1629 Wouter Loos & Jan Pegrom de Bye.

        • Eb Eb

          Oh Mike MB. The world must be a very scary place for you, and it’s going to get a lot worse. If you see your fellow human being as “insert nationality/race/enthinicity here”, and then chose who to love and who to hate, then you are doomed to be filled with hatred every day of your life. These are God’s people, all of them, created equal in his eyes.

          • RyanMEMBER

            Except the dirty Philistines, while they once may have been equal, their worship of Baal has condemned them to an eternity in the burning fires. The more modern unbelivers are likewise reamed.

          • mike mb

            Nope.
            Just pointing out the simple fact, that we have the 4.5 million foreign nationals onshore.
            1.8 million as TR, 670k as NZ SCV & 1.9 million PR are not Australian citizens.
            Foreign Nationals. Non citizen migrants are not a race. They are a whole mixture of races. Not hated or loved, simply again stating facts.
            They are foreign non Australians and they are the responsibility of their respective foreign governments.

            If you followed Macrobusiness or any other the media it’s pretty clear these 4.5 million non Australians are already a major social, job and housing theft.

            An overshoot of an unskilled third world migrant guestworkers and pretext visa trafficking.

            Trafficked in on false & pretext visas, lowering our GDP, lowering our wages, lowering our standard of living, destroying our education & welfare.

            Now they are a bio security risk, trafficked in via stopovers, most with no meaningful health insurance and they will present a massive burden on our health care system, competing with Australian citizens.

            It comes down to priorities.
            Does Australia have any responsibility for this 4.5 million third world migrant burden?

            No. They are foreign nationals.

            So why isn’t Australia taking steps to cancel the visas of say 850,00 foreign students & partners who now don’t even have a pretext course to attend. Because the basis of their pretext visa & CoE no longer exists.

            Or the regional & rural or so called ‘skilled visa’ holders when nearly 3 million Australian citizens are now unemployed?
            And so on.
            -/-
            Only someone with a real hatred for Australia and Australian’s would wish this burden on us.

            Is that your position?
            Maybe you are the one with the problem here.

  27. DPM

    Great information and insight into your thinking.
    Don’t know if you follow realvision but it would be great to see you on there someday soon.