Ukraine continues to dominate headlines. As we write, it appears Russia’s initial tactics have failed and a combination of its frustration, incompetence and brutality hallmarks the next stage of this conflict. In 2000, the Chechen capital, Grozny, had suffered a greater degree of destruction than befell Dresden at the end of WWII, so Putin’s current…
Those of a certain age will remember the BBC sitcom, ‘The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin’, written by David Nobbs and starring Leonard Rossiter. It told the story of a middle aged executive rebelling against the tedium of his job. Reggie had reached a point where he could see through the office politics and constant failings…
I don’t think Stealers Wheel were referring to central bankers in their 1973 hit ‘Stuck in the middle with you’ although I could well be mistaken. However, everywhere one cares to look at present, the law of unintended consequences appears eager for a fight. Or, to put it another way, Murphy’s Law is alive and…
Mrs Newsome enjoys watching ‘Grand Designs’, fronted by Kevin McCloud. I occasionally watch it and sometimes it’s interesting to see how a family of six now live in an old ship’s funnel, up a tree in the Cotswolds. However, there’s something about him I just don’t like. Pretentious? Airy fairy? Head in the (Mc) clouds?…
Markets remain range bound. Central banks continue to emphasise support (or is it endless subsidy?) despite economies reopening. On the other hand, Covid flareups are still happening and while the Biden administration’s chief medical officer, Dr Anthony Fauci, made it clear he didn’t expect a return to lockdowns, he commented that “things are going to…
Earlier this year, we decided that we wanted a new way to share information about our approach to investment management, how we operate and to whom our services are best suited. There are many considerations when making investment decisions, influenced by individual circumstances and objectives, which require a tailored approach. We decided that a helpful…
The Nobel Memorial Prize winning economist Milton Friedman noted that “only the government can take perfectly good paper and perfectly good ink and render the combination completely useless”. He was, of course, referring to the dangers of inflation, once governments lose control of it. Inflation is a problem that hasn’t troubled the scorer for years…
Readers of a certain age will probably recognise the title as a play on the chorus of Crosby, Stills & Nash’s 1969 hippy anthem, ‘Marrakesh Express’. ESG, on the other hand, is a little less long in the tooth. It stands for Environmental, Social and Governance and is an investment trend fast approaching the mainstream.…
Jagger and Richards sagely told us that you can’t always get what you want. Harry and Meghan would likely agree, as we suspect, would many investors who signed up for ‘equity income’. Or, to be more precise, a high income derived from equities. This particular corner of the equity market is big business but with…
Very few things in life are predictable; perhaps only death, taxes and the next three Russian presidential elections. The investment industry is based on prediction, which is a pity because it isn’t very good at it. Like a medieval alchemist attempting to transform base metal into gold (again), it is too often fixated with predicting…