Its Not Harry

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Watching Brief – August 2022

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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 2022

Midweek Musings – holiday time!

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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.

Not thinking too hard for a fortnight!

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Watching Brief – July 2022

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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!

British summer weather for markets – highly unpredictable?

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……

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Midweek Musings – diverse opinions

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A surfeit of material

When I comment on markets with a view to distilling those factors that will help you assess the probability of various possible future trends, what you read is all my own thinking, although it is influenced by the wide range of infomation and commentary that comes my way.

One resource I continue to have on hand is what used to be called the trade press. This is of course delivered electronically these days but it still has the feel of a specialist newspapers such as are issued to all professions, whether it be in a form as grand as the BMJ or Lancet for doctors, or The Caterer for those is the, well, catering profession. Trade papers tend to have obvious names so mine are called Investment Week, Professional Adviser and so on. One Citywire publication used to be called New Model Adviser, now shortened to NMA, but such Cromwellian overtones are rare!

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Mideweek musings – Dotcom Crash 2 (the sequel)?

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As global stock markets head South again on gloomy news about inflation, stagflation, growth, shortages and so on, I am prompted to revisit my suggestion some time ago that this cyclical reversal might end up like the long and painful decline (up to 60% in some markets) that followed the bursting of the ‘dotcom’ bubble.

So what happened 22 years ago?

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