Announcements

….to all of you who wished me well during my unexpected urgent medical episode.

I am now recuperating from a microdiscectomy operation which has relieved the disabling pressure on the nerve root feeding my right leg. I am not yet allowed to sit, apparently because that puts the most pressure on te lumbar spine, but am slowly increasing my walking to restore my atrophied leg muscles which thought they were redundant after 3 weeks when any attempt to use the ones on the right generated too much pain! I am writing this with the PC on a high chest of drawers! Typos may exceed the usual quota as I am not hooked into a large screen!

An aside

Immediately after I published my article suggesting that diversification was more tricky than just working through five continents and picking the largest markets, we had a really quite major set back in South Korea.

Looking at a graph on the KOSPI index and you will see a classic reversion to mean that has maybe not yet seen enough of an overshoot into the negative, plus we know that this was a market where a really large numbers of maybe ‘green’ investors had been chasing the semi-conductor story with borrowed money, so in itself not really an unusual event.

Why I mention it is that one might be owning a fund (I am) with a known South Korean bias and not fully appreciated (I did) that its excellent performance was driven by only two factors: sector focus (tech) and momentum. So any diversification based on geography and potential differences between say UK and the South Korean long term economic prospects, economic mix etc were, in the near term, totally eliminated by the factor elements of the fund porfolio composition. Of course, not all Asia Pacific funds would heve been concentrated in that way, but if the one you own was, it might be something you had not spotted!

Many readers will know that I have had some slow burning spinal illness issues for quite a while and last week something happened that turned chronic mild pain into acute disabling pain.

The result was an emergency admission to the neurological wing of the local major hospital – all very speedy and lots of tests done which show some moderately serious degradation. Conservative care with medications and very gentle physical rehabilitation is now happening and if that has not worked by next week, an operation will likely be necessary. A neuro surgeon will be brought in to review the MRI scan. Healthcare here is in the main more easily accessed than in the U.K. (on the equivalent of the NHS, which is great)

Meanwhile I am in a perfectly pleasant hospital ward watching swifts circling in a blue Summer sky getting well looked after by lovely medical staff.

Anything new, you need to know about?

I am of course still watching the world and the dimented actions of POTUS, as I am sure are you! The global oil supply reserve is running down fast and the markets are still betting on a quick resolution. I stand by all I have written recently on the dislocation between market valuations, notably in the USA, and the pending economic realities. Enjoy the unjustified gains in equities but assume a correction will be more dramatic the longer the over optimism lasts. The speculators will not be running the market for ever.

I apologise that this post will be a little less edited and complete for now, as I am working from my iPad only. Internet here is good, but even in a newish ward, electricity supply for patients is I think deliberately very minimal, so I have not had my laptop brought in. It would feel a bit ‘over the top’ too, as I am no bustling executive type these days!

Meanwhile, my editing software does not work with full functionality on IOS. Hence the simpler layout of this post. Normal service will be resumed ASAP!

I have just become aware that possibly someone is sending emails spoofing my WordPress account and suggesting I have issued a new password. I am not sure how widespread this is, because I only became aware of it when one user’s email host rejected the fake message and I got notified.

Note that if you wanted to reset your password on my web site, you would do this within the menber profile section. I DO NOT ISSUE PASSWORDS OTHER THAN AT INITIAL SIGN ON.

I would be grateful if any reader who has recieved an unrequested password reset email would let me know.

Stay safe!