Its Not Harry

Comment and opinion for retail investors in the UK

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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 (late!) – using equity income funds in a downturn

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I try to never be late, but at times a delay is not so important!

I have written a couple of pieces to introduce this subject and I had promised to comment on some specific funds last week.

However, I thought that the possibility that there was a ‘bottom’ in the market at that time (an idea that is still holding good, but it is early days yet) was a more urgent idea for your attention a week ago, so the global dividend/equity income fund examples got deferred.

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Smug Harry

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For some time, maybe over a year now, I have been telling anyone interested that owning fixed income funds was not going to be defensive in the near term. The classical non-correlation with equities was not going to work.

This was important to owners of the passive multi-asset funds that ONLY use fixed income assets in a set mix as volatility controls. The Vanguard LifeStrategy funds would be a good example.

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Watching Brief – April 2022

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Pottering About

I note that in previous years I have adopted a ‘first quarter end’ review approach in writing April briefings.  That still makes sense to me – we are now far enough into the year to get a feel for what will make 2022 different in economic terms and we can get an idea of what central banks are likely to do to try and manage economic growth and avoid a recession.

How good was my crystal ball?

I did some crystal ball gazing in January and identified a number of risks. Of the potential negatives, inflation and increasing geo-political tensions have turned out to be the two most significant headwinds, although increased US regulation is now coming through and we have not seen the back of Covid19 yet, especially in the Asia Pacific region.

One factor that I touted as a momentum positive, ESG investing, looks like being a little less of a useful guide short term than I predicted.  As the war in Ukraine and the associated sanctions on Russian energy have pushed the oil price up, so have the price of energy company shares, which will not fit in the portfolios of investors whose ESG filters are focused on sustainable energy and fossil fuel free energy production. This is a subject I address in the second part of this blog.

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