Its Not Harry

Comment and opinion for retail investors in the UK

Monthly commentary

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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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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Deep Dive – April 2025

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Trump 2 – what we know so far and the implications for investors

My more diligent subscribers may have noticed a pause in my Your Attention Please (YAP) posts which was partly because I was on holiday (in England) for a week and partly because the current situation demands a more in-depth commentary.

I would not usually write this monthly longer missive as a commentary on recent market returns or the evolving ‘macro’ background, but my take on the current state of affairs is that the impact of the bizarre behaviour of the incumbent of the White House is so significant in terms of the ongoing assessment of the market valuation of investment assets, that a calm, logical, albeit personally biased review of what has happened so far could be very useful to my readers. I think readers pay me for an opinion and observations, not just to report data!

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Deep Dive – March 2025

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Generative AI – Implications for Investors

A discussion with a subscriber recently prompted me to think that investors ought to be thinking now about the real long-term implications of the release into general use of what is loosely called generative AI – software like Chat GPT, Apple Intelligence, Gemini and DeepSeek.

Introduction

The shorthand AI is actually unhelpful because the word intelligence has always been the subject of controversy and debate and even Wikipedia’s opening lines under the heading of Intelligence point out that the definition is wide and has for over a century been a subject of professional debate amongst psychologists rather than philologists. 

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Deep Dive – February 2025

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Trump 2 – a different and personal take on the implications

 So far…

At this early stage of the new US President’s term of office, it is not possible to make any reliable predictions about the global macro economic impact beyond examining the potential threats, which I have already done in a number of ways, as have many, many other commentators.

I will this month offer what is absolutely only an opinion, based on my personal view of the world, so this piece is not claimed to be educational.  Feel free to disagree with me: I will be satisfied if I have prompted you to think about the situation in a new way or added an angle to your existing assessment.

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