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Its Not Harry

Comment and opinion for retail investors in the UK

Politics

Snippets – a foggy Autumn

20th October 2025 by Mark Potter Leave a Comment

All quiet on the Notharry front?

My readers may have noticed less blog posts recently. This had been deliberate on my part, for several reasons:

  • I had a few conversations with subscribers in which they confessed to not having time to read a few of my recent scribblings, sometimes I suspect for quite a few weeks. That means one of two things: I am posting too often or what I post is not useful or interesting. Now I am fairly sure that aside from the odd rant or attempt at dry humour, what I write IS useful to retail investors, so with that possibly conceited analysis, I have decided to reduce my frequency of posting to an average one longer read at the start of each month and one or two topical pieces in between.
  • Secondly, there are not many fundamental topics that I have not covered already in several ways: maybe a permanent long technical article, some reminder posts with cross references and now even maybe a video. I am therefore reluctant to write or record a piece that is just an unwanted repetition. On the other hand, as you know, I am very willing to write a piece on a subject that a particular subscriber wants explained or for me to comment on. Just tell me what you need!
  • Finally, current market conditions are so weird, so febrile and so full of risk (which last point I have made repeatedly already), that it is difficult to offer any intelligent guidance on portfolio servicing or reshaping over and above the usual basic essentials of being diversified, managing cash flows and taking the long view.

Nonetheless, I have collected quite a few thoughts on what are relevant factors that you might benefit from thinking about, or trends that need keeping an eye on, enough to make up one of my occasional ‘mish-mash’ lists of unconnected (or are they?) subjects that now follows.

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Filed Under: Members Only, News, Opinion, Politics, Portfolios

Deep Dive – October 2025

6th October 2025 by Mark Potter Leave a Comment

When a cult rules millions

For most of my working life, I have been able to tell those who asked me that politics made not much immediate difference to investment markets.  Of course, where politicians make significant changes to macro-economic conditions (say Reagan and Thatcher in the ‘80s under the influence of the monetarists and market liberalists), there will be impacts over the medium to long term. 

However, as a rule markets have always taken the view that in the democratic ‘free’ world, politicians come and go and policies oscillate from a bit leftish to a bit rightish with the odd major annoying upset, like Brexit.

It is also widely understood that the most important capitalist economy, the USA, is really under the control of two main groups – a loose collective of shadowy billionaire oligarchs and the lobbying firms employed by the mega corporations.  This was explained to me when I was a teenager attending college to study business and as a Brit, I struggled to believe it, but now there is some evidence (especially during the Boris Johnson period) that the same sort of democratic corrosion is occurring in the UK.

Are politics really relevant for investors?

The people with the real power in the USA welcomed Trump’s re-election and the US equity market performed accordingly early this year.  Here was a man who was not very bright, had only made money with the help of Russian property developers or by blatantly disreputable behaviour, when left to his own devices went bankrupt over and over again, had an ego that forever needed massaging, and was utterly free of the ethics that most people think define Christian societies. 

In essence, they thought that they knew, as the KGB had discovered much earlier, that this was a man whom you could easily manipulate with a little forethought.

That was however their mistake. 

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Filed Under: Economics, Markets, Members Only, Monthly commentary, Opinion, Politics

Deep Dive – July 2025

1st July 2025 by Mark Potter Leave a Comment

Half time scores

We are now at the end of the first 6 months 0f 2025 and more significantly, a little under that much into Trump 2.0.  What has been the actual impact of the orange one’s political and economic ‘policies’’ on markets?  To what extent have our advance calls on the widely anticipated instability and general weirdness that followed the election of Donald J Trump protected our portfolios or better still, left us exposed to new opportunities?

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Filed Under: Asset Allocation, Economics, Markets, Members Only, Monthly commentary, Politics

YAP (PS) – how Trump hangs on to power

16th June 2025 by Mark Potter Leave a Comment

In my earlier post today, I mentioned the 4 old men of the current apocalypse, to adapt St John, and as I wrote the words about at least a couple of them being potentially voted out of office, I felt uncomfortable. It just does not feel like that’s going to happen.

Most people know that if Netanyahu loses office, he will almost certainly go to prison on corruption charges. So he will do anything to stay in power. Trump maybe more ‘Teflon coated’ but no-one is going to argue that he does not want to hang on to power until his dying day.

I think I know how he will at least try to do that.

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Filed Under: Members Only, Monthly commentary, Opinion, Politics, Rants

YAP – Dirty old men

16th June 2025 by Mark Potter Leave a Comment

We are currently living through one of those periods when geo-political risk is far and away the factor most likely to influence our financial well-being.

It is generally true that markets are not the economy and vice-versa and economic principals at a high level are somewhat insulated from political shenanigans, but at the moment we have a US president whose policies are so disturbing to investors that the US Dollar is under considerable pressure, which is definitely a relevant ‘macro’ issue for investors, and we have the war in Ukraine driving a sea change in military spending in Europe and the war in the Middle East (when is there not a war in the Middle East?) pushing up oil prices, both wars being factors investors need to count as relevant,

Thinking through the ultimate drivers of the rather disturbing global geo-political scenario, with the aim of predicting how much worse things will get before they get better (by better, I mean more predicable and stable), one cannot avoid thinking: Trump, Putin, Netanjahu, Khameinei. Today’s Guardian newspaper has a cartoon featuring these characters under the heading ‘Country for Old Men’, playing on the Coen brothers’ film of that name, based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel. I understand that the film revolves around money, is extremely violent and many innocent bystanders get killed. The protaganists are utterly ruthless and without symapathy. So the cartoonist’s satire seems highly appropriate.

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Filed Under: Economics, Markets, Politics

YAP – USA proposal to unilaterally raise extra taxes from overseas investors

9th June 2025 by Mark Potter Leave a Comment

Sorry, there was no way I could make the title of this piece snappy!

The topic is perhaps one that will not be widely covered, if at all, in the mass media, but it is raising serious alarm bells in the investment industry outside of the USA, and may well have implications for American investors too, as I will explain.

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Filed Under: Members Only, Monthly commentary, News, Opinion, Politics, Portfolios

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