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.
Category: Financial Advice
financial advice
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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.
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Week 32 – October 5th 2020 – Week 29 of lockdown
I discussed with my financial advisor Nikki, if this was worth doing, giving Claire the marriage allowance, I must admit, I didn’t know this was still around.
https://www.gov.uk/marriage-allowance
Nikki said it was a good idea, so Claire now has this in her tax code.
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Week 29 – September 14th 2020 – Week 26 of lockdown
We decided to get a valuation for the first time, was seen by a lovely estate agent and of course Claire was the closest to the valuation, but we were very happy with it and also that nothing needed to be done to the property for selling it. 🙂 Actually there is, so watch this space.
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Week 29 – September 14th 2020 – Week 26 of lockdown
We have lived in our home for 27 years, we can actually call it our home, as after several phone calls we finally got the house deeds this week. Good old COVID19 always here to help, but I wasn’t going to be beaten.
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Week 28 – September 7th 2020 – Week 25 of lockdown
This was a big week, the AJ Bell system had gone live, and so for extra income in the future, Nikki had set me up two ISA plans. Let’s hope these do well.
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Week 27 – August 31st 2020 – Week 24 of lockdown
Global equity markets continue to benefit from the unpresented levels of stimulus measures put in place by global central banks and the loose monetary policies being undertaken by Governments. With interest rates appearing that they will be kept at record low levels for the foreseeable future the environment for equity investing remains positive even though certain parts of the market (large technology companies) are looking fully valued.
The expected result of the upcoming US election would normally be having a far larger effect on the markets but with the outcome too close to call, investors appear more focused on the recovering economy and the stimulus measures. A second term for Mr Trump should again be positive for equity markets with his business friendly policies, but even a Mr Biden win with his promises of higher taxes and increased regulation the outlook for shares does not appear overly dark.
At this moment in time, Apple are worth more than the FTSE 100.
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Week 22 –July 27th 2020 – Week 19 of lockdown
In discussion with my financial market man Graeme at Brewin Dolphin, one thing you have to learn this is not a 100 metre sprint, but a marathon, a roller coaster journey, but in this case, hopefully a lot more climbs then drops 🙂
“If the two largest economies in the world were too seriously fall out then the ramifications would be felt all around the world and all stock markets would fall. We are however hopeful that given that the US have an election on the 4th November, President Trump will do his best to control tensions as he definitely needs a good stock market if he has any chance of retaining power, which at the current time according to the polls looks unlikely.
I have bought for your portfolio today a new holding of a physical silver exchange traded commodity fund. This should be negatively correlated to equity markets therefore offering some protection if the US, China situation significantly deteriorates from here. I have chosen silver rather the traditional hedge into gold as it is our opinion that it offers better value.”
I have to admit, it does annoy me, that my future and virtually everyone’s future is controlled by a country that we have no control over or can vote in 🙁
