Its Not Harry

Comment and opinion for retail investors in the UK

Education

YAP – False optimism?

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Markets in the developed world seems to have taken the announced pause on the Liberation Day tariffs as suggesting that the more market friendly component of Trump’s acolytes has got the upper hand and the pro-tariff lobby has been banished to the broom cupboard (to paraphrase the FT).

I think it is perfectly normal for markets to react positively to good news, even if it is only a deferment of bad news. However, such rallies usually end when the researchers and strategists get round to looking at what risks still remain. And there is a really big one, one that is more a dinosaur than an elephant in the room.

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YAP – sale of the century?

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I recently watched a webinar from Columbia Threadneedle, the main purpose of which was to promote their UK Equity Income skills, a market segment where the firm has always had a decent reputation with advisers. Columbia is the US based owner but Threadneedle has been around right back into my childhood when my father worked for the then privately owned insurer Eagle Star and Threadneedle was its investment management arm. It went through ownership by British American FS, Allied Dunbar and then Zurich before ending up with Columbia.

The webinar was presented by Jeremy Smith and Dominic Younger and a fair part of it explained their investment philosophy and process which is very much ‘bottom up’. They listed a number of holdings and I was broadly impressed, but this note is not about their fund.

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YAP – new video

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I will publish a new informal ‘at the whiteboard’ style video talk at midday UK time today. There is a return to the Daly Telegraph Guide to Investing from the 1980s and some high-level guidance on the techniques of portfolio diversification.

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Deep Dive – May 2025

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Trump 2 – 100 days and a little more clarity

I would not normally expect to be writing this monthly piece as an ongoing running commentary on a single macro economic factor, but the impact of Trump’s presidency on the global economy and investment markets and therefore on our personal wealth is so dramatic and directly relevant that I expect that you would welcome a reasoned opinion on the implications of where we are now, just over 3 months into this global (insert expletive of your choice here).

After the first false dawn, when markets (especially in the USA) were assuming that reduced regulation and a more business climate friendly environment would allow already over valued equities to continue marching upwards, the reality of tariffs calculated by a methodology that was so primitive it was genuinely beyond belief, flip flopping on that and all the rest you know about, has all served to create a climate of uncertainty and what’s more, direct and immediate practical consequences including a supply shock for goods coming out of China. Trump’s 100 day speech, reported the day I publish this article, is said to be full of falsehoods and more of the same bombast.

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