Watching Brief – August 2022
Pottering About
Last August my sub-heading for this introduction suggested some grounds for optimism with a final caveat (Reasons to be Cheerful 1,2 and 2.5). I fear I may be about to repeat myself in sentiment, although the context is very different.
Last year, I was finding reasons for hoping that a runaway bull market might hold up a little longer. This year I am going to suggest that we might have seen the end of a serious (and to be honest, long overdue) pull back to reality.
So what are this summer’s reasons to be cheerful and what ought investor’s to be worried about?
[Read more…] about Watching Brief – August 2022Midweek Musings – holiday time!
I will be overseas (for me, but actually in England) for a couple of weeks and so my next post will be the August monthly briefing.
Not much worthy of comment has happened in the last week. Markets seem less volatile but the currency markets have heavily favoured the US dollar against the Euro because of fears that Russia will self-sanction and cut off gas supplies to Germany, and against the Pound due to England not currently having a functioning political leadership.
Clear out at Abrdn?
I have mentioned in blog posts and rather more specifically in conversations over recent months the concerns I have had about the ‘merger’ of Aberdeen Investments (a business whose past record was not one I admired in ethical terms) and Standard Life, a former Victorian era Scottish mutual life office that had a very good track record in running smaller company and UK/European ethical funds, back from the time when ESG was rather less of a greenwashing oppportunity and ethical meant what you would naturally think.
The latest news, that Abrdn is merging its UK and European equity teams, however it gets spun in the press releases, is clearly a cost cutting measure, although it is said that the smaller companies team remains separate (I guess that is really only a semantic concession to the marketing team).
A departure that I think some subscribers will want to think about is that Lesley Duncan, the well thought of investment director and manager of the UK Ethical fund (I own that one myself) is leaving.
The merger of 2 big investment businesses is always going to be about shareholder interests and never those of investors. A change of fund managers in such a situation is a disruption, likely to cause loss of focus and a good reason to put any funds you own that are impacted on watch, or even, subject to tax and financial planning considerations, look for a switch to a more settled alternative.
Midweek Musings – an emerging argument?
Watching Brief – July 2022
Pottering About
I write this in a very warm room, with outside temperatures around 30 degrees. Summer has arrived in Lithuania! Gardens are running away with growth after a wet Spring and the swimming lakes are busy at weekends.
Selling in May ahead of going away would not however have been sensible this year – a new cliché for selling in October would have been a useful guide!
In my experience, stock markets usually become listless in the months of July and August and barring new major global events that impact on economics and finance – which are more likely to be negative than positve anyway – it is very hard to take tactical decisions with any confidence.
In essence, I think of these months as a ‘do nothing’ period (apart from keeping a weather eye open). In fact, when building my client review calendar as an IFA, I scheduled hardly any meetings in these months, only partly because I myself wanted to take a holiday, of course, and I can never recall anyone objecting!
Clearly when markets have headed down for several months and the underlying conditions are not offering any obvious reasons to expect a return to a bull market, selling quality investments would only serve to supply bargains to others. This is one of those times when a shrewd investor lives on their reserved deposit funds or other income sources and leaves their portfolio well alone. But human psychology is not so easily managed……