In 2020, the global trend of investing in certain companies has switched to investment in economic sectors in general. This means that people got worried about the risk of bankruptcy and started splitting their funds between several destinations relying more on national and international economic sectors such as Pharmaceuticals, Banking, and a variety of other domains.
Last year the maximum investment took place in economics which suffered the least from the pandemic. These are Information Technology, Pharmaceuticals, and Product Retail.
It’s noteworthy that during the pandemic people invested in mobile apps most of all. The mobile analytical platforms Adjust and Apptopia carried out research based on the mobile use statistics from the US, UK, Germany, Japan, Turkey, Brazil, and Russia to find out the following remarkable trends of 2020.
- Finance apps and services have grown in popularity by 88%.
- In developing countries, finance mobile apps demonstrate a better reach and progress level compared to banking services apps. In developed countries that had to face a lockdown, finance mobile apps have become an alternative to national and commercial bank services. This means that mobile banking in such countries has outperformed real-life services.
- The volume of mobile payments has increased by 49%. The highest percentage of smartphone payments took place in Japan, Germany, Turkey, the US, and the UK. According to Forbes, in 2020 mobile payments in the US comprised more than 130 billion USD.
- The highest performance and popularity rates among mobile apps in 2020 were achieved by the super-apps for banking and payments, such as Alipay, WeChat in China, Zalo in Vietnam, KakaoTalk in South Korea, and Revolut in the UK.
- Fintech credits have skyrocketed in popularity in banking services. As part of this service, Fintech service companies give monetary credits and loans online, simply via finance and crediting apps available for smartphones. Surprisingly, in this case, a creditor is an organization that has no real-life postal address.
According to the research by Ernst & Young, the total volume of investment globally in 2020 has decreased compared to this level in 2019. Due to the European lockdown, 10% of direct foreign investment operations were cancelled, and 25% of such operations were blocked until better times. At the same time, approximately 50% of investors worldwide have cancelled a part of their investment deals in 2020.
The research by Dsight shows that only 108 startup investment deals were closed in the first half of 2020 which is 6% less than that in 2019. The actual volume of investment in 2020 has decreased from 497.5 million to 183.8 million USD which is two times less than the level of 2019. It should be noted that these facts refer to large-scale investments only. Speaking of private investors, the situation was different in 2020. Since share prices have dropped down dramatically, many investors saw a great opportunity in this sudden decrease. Thus, people started buying shares at the lowest price to further resell them for a great sum as soon as the global market stabilizes.
Nick Grebenkine, an experienced investor, suggests that it is high time to invest in the following areas of business. “Ecommerce, online deliveries, and other online services will be a good investment for the nearest couple of years. From my experience, artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, anti-fraud systems, IoT, and any automation solutions will expand to all existing markets soon so it is better to jump in now. E-health, biotech, and pharmaceutical will long remain the prime focus since health now is the core priority for humanity”. Finally, if you’re at the very beginning of your investment path, start with shares of finance and banking apps that currently evolve faster than other markets.