“Inflation acts as a gigantic corporate tapeworm,” Warren Buffett wrote in 1982 when US consumer prices rose just over 6 per cent over the year. “That tapeworm pre-emptively consumes its requisite daily diet of investment dollars regardless of the health of the host organism.”
With apologies to those reading this over breakfast, Buffett’s graphic assessment still rings true 41 years later. Open a company annual report published in the past three years and you are likely to read a litany of events such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Covid-19 pandemic that have blown the best-laid strategy off course and often into uncharted waters.
However, while the initial market impact of these has dissipated, the longer-term legacy remains in the form of increased energy and food scarcity, disrupted international supply chains and, in some countries including the UK, high levels of inflation.