Perspectives
Do not chase the market
December, 2017
With equity markets near all-time highs we find it fascinating that everybody wants to embrace risk. This is primarily due to the concern of missing out on returns as investors worry that they will not meet their objective if they are not benefitting from good times in equity markets. This is true: it is […]
Facing Facts about Britain’s Budget
November, 2017
George Orwell once wrote that the best way to tackle a problem was to get up in the morning and simply “Face it.” Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, clearly took a page out of Orwell’s playbook this week delivering a budget that looked squarely at the facts of Britain’s diminished economic standing; presenting […]
Rational exuberance?
November, 2017
Warren Buffett has become famous for his long term views on investment and focus on a few key investment principles. Some of his quotes are very pertinent in the current environment as investors are beginning to show signs of acting irrationally: “We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy […]
End of an Era
November, 2017
Last week Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, brought the curtain down on the decade long policy of ultra-easy interest rate policy. The 0.25% increase in UK base rate was the first increase since the Global Financial crisis sent interest rates to historic lows across the developed world and introduced the public to […]
Getting Back to Work
November, 2017
One of the drivers behind Keyne’s monumental “General Theory of Employment. Interest and Money” was his incomprehension at the failure of the economy to provide work for the many idle hands of the time who wanted to find work. There was, after all, no shortage of work to do. Amongst many other things, the book […]
Political Stability: Lessons from the East
October, 2017
In recent notes we have highlighted the growing disparity between the improvement in the economic landscape visible globally and the discontent of voters expressed in elections and political campaigns across the developed world: Trump, Brexit, Catalonia and the Lombardia to name but a few. We see this political turmoil as the key risk to continued […]
Tacit wins prestigious award
October, 2017
Tacit Investment Management has been announced as “Best Small Firm” in the 2017 Citywire Wealth Manager Investment Performance Awards. It was also shortlisted in the “Aggressive Portfolio” category. The awards were held in association with Asset Risk Consultants (ARC), which offers an independent assessment of the portfolio returns of individual wealth management firms to provide benchmarks […]
Nominal V. Real Returns
October, 2017
Whilst most investors await a rise in the UK interest rate later this year, we continue to be amazed by the focus on this nominal rate in an environment where inflation is running at over 3% as we cannot see its relevance to an investor. Since the late 1970s we have become accustomed to nominal […]
Goodbye to Wolfgang Schauble
October, 2017
Wolfgang Schauble, the current German Finance Minister, will shortly leave his post to take up his new role of speaker of the German Bundestag. Although he is probably unknown to the average man in the street, he has been possibly the most influential and damaging politician in Europe throughout the course of the Eurozone crisis. […]
Focus on cashflows rather than politics
October, 2017
How should we quantify risk when investing; is it the risk of losing money? Or, maybe the risk of not achieving our financial goals? Or the risk of preserving our buying power over the longer term in the case of a pension? The reality is that risk exists only in the future and it is […]