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RiseDear readers,

“It’s underground,” Professor Martin Kirschstein used these words to start a phone call with my colleague Lucia Schmidt. Then he broke out suddenly: “As a pediatrician who has worked in the clinic for 40 years, I have never seen such a wave of infections,” he said. Kirschstein is the chief physician of the Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine Clinic at Celle General Hospital. His clinic has 33 general beds and 10 intensive care beds. In fact, they are currently occupied. But it does not apply to Covid patients.Up to 50% of the beds are for Children in need whose respiratory tract is severely affected by the so-called RS virusTheir breathing, oxygen supply and circulation must be closely monitored. Some of these children require intravenous fluids so that they can absorb enough fluids. Others must be ventilated because the small lungs can no longer provide enough oxygen to the organism without assistance.

Respiratory syncytial virus, or RS virus for short, is the most common cause of lower respiratory tract infections in infants and young children, namely the trachea, bronchi and alveoli. Few children celebrate their second birthday without being exposed to the virus. Most children will experience cold symptoms and fever after being infected with the virus, but they will recover within a few days. However, in infants three months before birth, premature infants, and children with chronic lung disease or congenital heart defects, the RS virus can cause severe pneumonia and even sepsis, which is life-threatening. There is a view that doctors are now moving other things besides corona; corona makes complicated situations more threatening.

Let’s continue to focus on other issues: Investors who have invested money in one of the major stock market barometers through passive index funds have hardly gone wrong in recent years-unless they leave the party prematurely. In the worst-case scenario, they sold at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, when prices plummeted across the board, and then never came back. Anyone who invested 10,000 euros in an ETF in the MSCI World Stock Index a year ago is now 3,300 euros rich. This broad-based fund is actually considered a solid foundation investment. MSCI World is composed of 1,600 companies in 23 industrial countries. Due to extensive risk diversification, it usually provides relatively reliable but not excessive returns. This description is no longer entirely correct: in the past ten years, the market leader iShares has provided a very impressive 12.7% average annual return for its flagship ETF in the MSCI world. But especially after such an unusually long period of time, investors should carefully examine their investment portfolios. A key question should be: Is the investment still balanced as expected? Tim Kanning did exactly that-to analyze what it has to do with American technology companies, please read here.

Selling a company presents a huge challenge for entrepreneurs. For many years, private wealth was the fifth round of the car, because work and family came first. Bonds, real estate, and stocks now stand out in order to make profitable and safe investments in sales proceeds. It may be a matter of luxury to consider, but whoever faces the question of how to invest a specific millions of dollars is as “helpless” as the heirs or winners who get rich overnight. This is the case of our financial expert Volker Looman. His conclusion is: Selling (small) businesses may be interesting, but at the moment it is not interesting to invest a few million more, because real estate prices are off track.

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