Its Not Harry

Comment and opinion for retail investors in the UK

Basics

September 2025 – Back to school!

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Introduction – Pick and Mix Revision

This month, I don’t have anything interesting to write about in the style of the Deep Dive longer articles that I usually start the month with, so I am allowing you a choice as to how much time you spend on your investment portfolio management education.  I thought it would be useful to offer what might be taken as a revision list or a prompt to put in place some processes that make sure you are continually and effectively on top of your portfolio. 

Because I have written and published on this web site a great deal of material and some very specific guidance on the various essential aspects of portfolio maintenance, much of what I would like you to review will be referenced by links to articles of various lengths.

You can decide exactly how much you want/need to take in as your personal refresher course and then reference the relevant articles, spreading the readings over a few sessions if you prefer.

Not everything that I currently think is important is already on record, so the second part of this month’s briefing does add some new suggestions.

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Deep Dive – January 2025

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Fixed Income – a refresher

This article is designed to satisfy a couple of subscriber requests to offer more core information about fixed income investing.

The asset class that comprises Gilts, Treasuries, Eurobonds, corporate bonds, elements of bank capital, assorted ‘notes’, private credit and the like has been an important investment opportunity for centuries but most beginner investors will, at best, have as their only acquired knowledge of the fixed income market some knowledge of National Savings Certificates.

I freely admit that it took me several years of day-to-day involvement in investment markets as an adviser to feel intuitively comfortable thinking about fixed income (henceforth interchangeably called ‘bonds’  as well, although bonds is a looser term).  That was the case even though I had formal training in corporate finance as a Chartered Secretary and had experience of over a decade working for a mortgage bank.  It’s not a subject that one can skim over and grasp.

I have procrastinated about writing this sort of article until now as even an introduction or refresher requires quite a lot of words.  I hope what follows is digestible and useful.

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Watching Brief – December 2023

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Pottering About

Last year, I wrote a traditional ‘review of the year’ piece in December.  I am thinking this year that it would be premature, as how December turns out will likely be the way we remember 2023, which has been very bumpy for investors, especially this Autumn.  So, I will likely write about what lessons we can draw from 2023 next month, using my conclusions to take an astrologers look into 2024!

For this post, I will instead draw your attention to a few topics that I hope will be salient and assist you in your portfolio assessments.

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Midweek Musings – some more quiz answers

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I could not think of anything connected with markets and investing in the current climate to write about this week. I have plenty of ideas, but I have not go very far in developing them so that they would be useful to investors and worth giving up your time to reading!

I will confine this week’s post to answering two more linked questions in my June quiz.

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