The winds of change
Just occasionally, things suddenly look better than they did before. And it shows. If you have logged into Nucleus recently, (and once again I urge all of those who don’t log in to start right now) you will have seen that valuations are suddenly climbing. This isn’t pushing them to over-valued territory, it’s simply a catch up.
In a short week the Yanks have agreed to talk turkey (festive pun) with the Chinese and the UK General Election delivered a resounding blow to those who threatened to replace Capitalism with something akin to Marxism. Now I’m not going to get political, but it became clear that anyone who had built up any life savings at all would have been on John & Jeremy’s hit list.
These events, along with resolved bank liquidity issues in the US have given global stock markets a welcome upward tailwind. In the US, recession has been averted it seems, so its full steam ahead once again. And boy do UK shares look cheap in the eyes of US investors.
its a fair swap
It’s natural for us Brit’s to look to see how our English Pound performs versus the Buck and the Euro. They are the two currencies we use when on holiday. We saw Sterling spike and now its dropped off some in the following week. This is natural. The currency exchange markets act like a casino with hundreds of thousands of gamblers putting a wager on, over the next week or day or hour and even a couple of minutes. These guys would bet on two Seagulls fighting over some discarded chips. It’s a place for investors to avoid.
However there are lots of currency pairs, and the one which best describes these gamblers’ views is the Aussie Dollar versus the Japanese Yen. For the Aussie, read “risk on” – for the safe haven Yen, read “risk off”. It looks like the currency traders are positioning themselves right now for an extended period of booming markets globally.
dare to plan
We have lived with so many years of political problems that we are afraid to dream that normality will return. It has probably caught us out. “What, you want me to think positively?” Brexit will happen and a free trade deal will follow eventually. Donald Trump will be put through the mangle, and the Senators will eventually throw the impeachment out at some point. The Chinese will deal with the US on fair terms. All of these things are beyond our control.
What is in our control, is what we could achieve over the next five years. As UK citizens, I believe it’s pretty clear that taxation should now remain broadly the same as it was. Income tax, capital gains tax, inheritance tax and corporation tax may undergo a few tweaks, a little more revenue may be raised. But in order to keep the UK a civilised society we need to invest further in to Healthcare, Education, Law and Order and Infrastructure.
So let’s all concentrate on what we can control.
share your plans
Tell us where you plan to visit. What you want to achieve. How much you want to save. How much you want to spend. How much you want to give.
As the year and the decade draw to a close, now is the perfect time to sit back a while and plan the next 5 years of your life. Let’s try to imagine these will be the best 5 years of our lives. And if we are all still here at the half way point of this new decade, we can then once again sit down and plan another best 5 years of our lives. The future starts today.
This was a party political broadcast on behalf of the Happily Ever After Party
The more the merrier Howard. All the best to the HJS team for 2020. Keep up the good work. Peter.
I for one would welcome a return to the more regular informative and inspirational updates. It helps me to understand the complex world of finance.
HS – I’d welcome a fortnightly read, particularly if good times are coming! Merry Christmas to all. S
Thank you Howard. Once again a thought provoking blog.
Keep up the good work and a very Merry Christmas to all at HS.
I must admit when things are on the down I tend to put my head under the sheets and stop looking at Nucleus and put my trust in you Howard. Boris has changed all that and I can’t believe the turn around ..wow!
I’m now embarrassed with the rate of positive change and accept that your kick for us to plan (to spend in our case) is needed. But what to spend it on? We don’t like cruises, we’re waiting for technology to mature before we replace the cars so really big items that don’t result more investment are hard to define.
I’ve decided to start by setting a spend target for the next five years , which will be based on keeping ahead of your high performance.
It’s a hard life!!!
Hi to our Investment team. I have been logging on daily to the Nucleus platform and have been very happy to do so in the last few weeks. The real boom on the 12th December just accelerated the good news. Our portfolio looks healthy and is still going in the right direction.
Thank you for looking after us in the very trying times but we now live in real hope and dare I say expectation that we can spend some cash if we feel the need. Here comes a new dishwasher!
Thank you and have a great festive break with family and friends.
Barrie & Val
Perfect Howard, stability for the next 5 years ,a very happy New Years to come (all 5 of them)
Howard
I always read your blogs with interest, monthly or fortnightly. I don’t always agree with you politically but it’s good to get another perspective. If you have something to say, i would go once a fortnight.