What a week that was….! But little changed …….
Democracy in Action – a week of merry politics few have ever experienced.
Monday started with Prime Minister May pulling the vote on her proposal to leave the EU and the fallout continued……
Wednesday saw PM May securing the ‘confidence’ of the Tory Members of Parliament, following the no-confidence vote which saw serious distraction and sterling and the UK investment markets suffering further woes. PM May confirmed that she would not run as PM in the next election.
Thursday – PM May gets back on her horse and travels to ‘try’ to secure clarity on the ‘Back stop’ and commit the position to the ‘legally binding embodiment of the agreement’, rather than gathering simple assurances, which the DUP and the House of Commons are generally unwilling to accept. Action will be required as the 29th March 2019 leaving date approaches. There was no movement from the EU in relation to the ‘Backstop’ being set in to the body of the agreement to ‘leave’.
Friday saw the release of Chinese data that focused investment thinking away from Brexit and the political jokes for the day – or at least to the point of this note being written!
China’s ‘slowing’ is global news and certainly spooks the global markets, weakening investment sentiment.
Economic and Central Bank policy gradual tightening?
Trade Wars and Political and Geo Political disruption creates huge uncertainty and turns sentiment sour, regardless of the recent strong fundamentals in the US and wider economics from an output and jobs numbers viewpoint.
Economic headwinds are getting stronger with last week’s political barometer indicating a hurricane of weather hanging around the UK!
Could the central banks normalisation be set back further? The language of the BoE and from the ECB is somewhat akin to ‘recessionary’ speak, with investment markets taking big dips, maybe further falls may be less pronounced…? Sometimes language produces a self-fulfilling prophecy, so we are unlikely to see a Santa Rally this Christmas!
The political turmoil expected by some, many even, following the vote to leave, was kicked down the path to current times so we must trust that a ‘perfect storm’ doesn’t appear and grab the wider economic environment and subsequent investment markets, where Trump’s eggs come home to roost and his battles on many fronts don’t start to swing to major losses, especially on the economic front. Normalisation – whatever the neutral rate means to Fed Chair Jerome Powell may take some time to develop.
Best Price Advice – Investment risk models
Our investment programme is delivering risk adjusted returns and performing effectively, along the investment risk models ‘efficient frontier’ so producing the desired outcomes, relative to the investment market turbulence.
Not only is our service and outcome quality but value is being delivered for our clients and customers also… based upon outcomes over the medium to longer term.
Take a look at an article from Morningstar – in relation to UK stocks being cheap.
http://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/news/172475/uk-cheap-regardless-of-brexit-outcome.aspx?ut=3
The above link was written by Emma Wall.
Dan Kemp of Morningstar says:
“we find UK equities to be somewhere between 30% to 45% cheaper than the US market on a combination of valuation metrics”
Perspective… which is sometimes overlooked.
Strategy
As always, risk diversity is key to producing best outcomes, where the balance of assets is constructed to meet an investor’s goals and risk capacity and tolerance…
Building a portfolio that is ‘All weather’ for the medium to longer term is what we do best for our investment clients.
Many asset allocators talked about diversity across sectors and regions and asset classes, we diversify across the above using contrarian thinking fund managers where possible also.
An example of this would be holding the following funds in our UK equity section, as the sector has recently varied in performance widely.
LF Woodford Equity Income –weif-fund-facts-woodford-funds-082018-1537198067
https://woodfordfunds.com/funds/weif/
LF Lindsell Train UK Equity Income –https://www.lindselltrain.com/funds/cf-lindsell-train-uk-equity-fund.aspx
Trojan Income – https://www.taml.co.uk/Funds/UK-UCITS/Trojan-Income-Fund#;
Trojan Income Fund Fact Sheet November 2018
TB Evenlode Income –
Evenlode-Income-Factsheet-March-2018-V2
https://evenlodeinvestment.com/funds/evenlode-uk-income-fund
This is an example of why spread of fund manager in a specific sector has worked, as a leading manager – such as Neil Woodford, has troubled times.
We maintained the fund and recommend that the fund remains to our investors as a diversifier following holding meetings with the Woodford Asset Managements. Neil Woodford is confident that his investment positioning will develop into long term expectation of returns for his investors; Neil Woodford has done this before a number of times, we trust he pulls a rabbit out of a hat once again!!
https://www.bestpricefs.co.uk/blog/investment-views-update-from-woodford-asset-management/
• 1992 – ERM ‘Economics of the madhouse’
• 1998 – 2000 Tech Bubble that burst!
• 2009 – 2010 Dash for Trash
• 2016-2018/19???
Again, please note that the content of this communication is not to be taken as advice. Advice is always personal to the individual/entity in the form of a recommendation.
If you would like advice, simply get in touch.
Happy Christmas reading….