What to buy as the pandemic’s pent-up demand is finally released

As economies reopen, says Merryn Somerset Webb, people are going to start spending again. And when they do, here’s what you want to be holding.

People queueing to get in a supermarket
People want to shop
(Image credit: © Mario Tama/Getty Images)

While sitting at my desk one afternoon this week, I bought a recipe book, two jumpers, six pairs of socks, a Japanese tool bag, three sheets of Christmas window stickers and a fake rattan garden sculpture of a hare (light up). I am the very personification of something I have long insisted cannot exist – pent-up demand.

In usual circumstances there is rarely such a phenomenon as pent-up demand in the economy: if you want something and you can afford to buy it, there is demand for that thing; if you want something but cannot afford to pay for it, there is no demand for that thing. There might be elements of longing and hope, but not actual demand.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.