Always good to raise an issue with a provider or service. Today I got 500 points on my Costa card, for saying how I felt about them having people sitting inside in a tier 4 area.
Category: Financial Advice
financial advice
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Week 44 – December 28th 2020 – Week 2 of Tier 4 restrictions
Feedback from the year and how my portfolio was doing.
Thank you for your email and I agree that 2020 was a difficult year on so many fronts. 2021 offers the potential for further equity price growth but this could simply be because there is no alternative (TINA). With the unpresented levels of stimulus that have been put in place to keep economies going through the pandemic we must now be watchful on how governments and central banks row back from these emergency measures and hope that they have learnt from the taper tantrum of 2013.
According to the valuation I can see this morning the Brewin Dolphin portfolio is now xxxx a gain of nearly 10% since inception in July.
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Week 43 – December 21st 2020 – Week 1 of Tier 4 restrictions
Finally!! An early Christmas present, well for me as I voted to leave. They obviously don’t want any other country to leave after this ridiculous long wait!!
1,645 days after the UK voted to leave the EU, 328 days after we actually departed, the shape of our relationship with our nearest neighbours has been drawn and agreed – only days before the status quo will disappear.
The deal that will determine how we do business with our biggest trading partner.
The deal that both sides desperately wanted to achieve.
But the deal that was not, even though political logic suggested it, inevitable.
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Week 43 – December 21st 2020 – Week 1 of Tier 4 restrictions
This was very true for me in communication with my financial advisor.
All the very best for the festive period and let’s hope 2021 proves another profitable year (something positive did happen in 2020!).
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Week 41 – December 7th 2020 – Week 2 of Tier 2 restrictions
Finance update, regularly check in with them
Global equity markets are continuing to march higher on the back of the roll out of the Covid vaccine, hopes of further stimulus measures, and the recovering of companies and economies. This euphoria is being tempered by rising Covid cases in particular in the US, following the Thanksgiving holiday. The near term outlook remains difficult to call and a small sell off would not be a big surprise but the longer term outlook remains positive for equity investing.
Your SIPP is doing well showing a gain in value of 7.7% since the beginning of the calendar year.
The last trades that were carried out on your portfolio were done in late November with the inclusion of the student accommodation fund, which had seen its price severely affected by Covid19 and I also increased the holding of BNY Mellon Global Dynamic Bond fund, which is in the portfolio for its conservative characteristics.
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Week 39 – November 23rd 2020 – Week 4 of lockdown 2
Comments from my market investor after information I had read about the American Market.
Global equity markets are certainly in a good mood, feeding off the positive news from the vaccine developers. We are also seeing a slight rotation from growth companies into the more valued focused areas of the market thereby broadening the rally and giving it a firmer footing. This is meant to be a quite week for markets with Thanksgiving in the US but is proving to be nothing of the sort.
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Week 39 – November 23rd 2020 – Week 4 of lockdown 2
I recently received my car insurance and it had jumped over £300 to £856, I thought how was that justified? So with the help of Ziya and money supermarket was able to find a new insurance for just £349. Shows you should look around.
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Week 37 – November 9th 2020 – Week 2 of lockdown 2
You have to keep your financial advisor and market advisor on their toes.
Dear Graeme
Hope I find you well during this lockdown?
Why are the UK Bonds not doing well, compared to the UK Equities?
I notice silver took a big hit in the last week, why was that?
The markets appear to be very happy with the USA election predicted result (America is strange) and the announcement of the possible COVID19 vaccine.
Will Trump not accepting the result and suing cause any issues with the market?
The response –
Dear Michael,
Sorry that I did not answered you email first thing yesterday morning but for some strange reason my computer had decided that your emails should go straight into my “junk” folder. I have now sorted this with IT so it should not happen again.
Turning to your questions:
I’m well and really not too worried by Lockdown II.
Bonds tend to move inversely to equities, but this situation has not necessarily been the case over recent years as Central Banks have been pumping in liquidity through quantitative easing. Generally as a rule of thumb if investors are feeling confident equities prices will rise and the money for these investments will come from the fixed income (bonds) part of portfolios. Likewise in periods of risk off, equities will fall in price and bonds will gain in value as investors seek to protect capital values. The price of bonds will also move as interest rate and inflation expectations change.
Silver/Gold is similar to bonds in that they tend to move inversely to equity prices. Investors see the shinny metals as preserving capital. The price of silver has been weak recently as investors have being buying equities on the hope that the world economy will be back on its feet soon given the positive vaccine news.
The US election result (assuming Trump’s law suits come to nothing) could not have been better, Mr Biden winning but control of the Senate remaining with the Republicans. This will mean that Mr Biden will not be able to raise taxes as high as he had wished.
I do not believe that Mr Trump will cause too much disruption as he is very much on his own, with party members starting to distance themselves from him. However given what we know of Trump we cannot discount this in full.
In general we are still confident in investing in equities but in the near term we are likely to see periods of volatility as Covid infections rates rise.
If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to call.
Best wishes
Graeme
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Week 37 – November 9th 2020 – Week 2 of lockdown 2
They say it’s good to talk, we got our BT bill this week, but there was no discount as we had lost our phone service, for quite a few days in the last quarter.
So I rang BT and I’m so glad you get to speak with staff based in England, amazingly the fault was still open. They said that they would credit us £10 and I thought they said, they would let me know by email.
Two days later, I had not received any email, so I chased, the fault was still open, plus it turned out I shouldn’t have got an email, just the credit on the next bill, but due to the inconvenience they gave me £25 credit, I jokingly said, I call back in two day times and get more off, but this is the max credit. Always good to inquire and chase up.
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Week 35 – October 26th 2020 – Week 32 of lockdown
I was checking on my pension portfolio and was concern with the UK equities, was this down to Brexit.
This was the response I received from my market financial advisor
Global equities have been suffering over the last few weeks, as Covid cases rise across Europe and North America. The hopes for a further US stimulus package are dwindling ahead of the upcoming US elections. But all is not doom and gloom as we do not see a significant pull back in markets as existing stimulus measures remain in place.
UK equities continue to underperform other markets as international investors shy away, given the uncertainty of the outcome of Brexit discussions. Also the UK FTSE100 has a high concentration of value stocks, in areas such as energy and financials, which are currently out of favour but history tells us that at some point there will be a mean reversion to value investing away from growth (IT companies) but when this happens remains unclear. We are currently 9.5% underweight to the UK market compared to the benchmark, with overweight positions to North America and Europe.
