We describe our asset allocation changes and performance from December 2007 to August 2009. The returns themselves are quite impressive. How did this come about, if we knew we did not know what was going to happen in the short term?
read more Insights by Stuart FowlerWith the global financial crisis, currency volatility has leapt about fourfold after a long period of false calm. For sterling, over the duration of this equity bear market, this has coincided with almost unprecedented declines of between 30% and 40% against the currencies of the equity markets we invest in. Since the UK was one of the economies with the worst financial imbalances, both between domestic sectors and with the foreign sector, this drop is a significant element of the required economic adjustment process. In this Insight, we look at the prospects for key exchange rates from two different perspectives: the underlying process, which we believe to be a function of Purchasing Power Parity theory, and a geopolitical view of possible exceptional developments, ranging from the loss of dollar hegemony to partial unwinding of the euro zone.
read more Insights by Stuart FowlerWhen living through a period of unusual economic instability it is useful to try to unlearn most of what we have learnt as a standard framework for savings and investment, and focus instead on the essential power, unpredictability and unfairness of business. In any form of market economy, business, and only business is the source of both national and personal wealth creation and it is also the source of the sometimes massive changes in economic fortunes between generations, even when the overall trend is for increasing affluence.
read more Insights by Stuart FowlerAll individuals with large pension funds who completed HMRC form APSS200 prior to the 5th April 2009 should by now have received their certificate of protection, stating the type of protection, ‘enhanced’, ‘primary’’, or ‘enhanced (dormant primary)’, that is currently in place. Used correctly, this essential document helps protect individuals from incurring a penal tax charge of 55% for exceeding the standard lifetime allowance (SLA).
read more Insights by Joe ClarkThis was a deeply depressing budget, not so much because of the bleak economic context but because of the sense that, far from rising to the challenge, the Government is sinking into incoherence, inconsistency and irrelevance. We cannot remember a similar mood amongst professional advisers (not particularly prone to political bias) of despair and disdain.
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