There are periods in markets when safety feels less like a portfolio strategy and more like a rumour. The start of 2026 feels like one of them. The difficulty isn’t simply that share prices are falling. Markets do that from time to time, and any investor with a little experience understands that drawdowns are part […]
ISA Season Investing: What Safety Really Means in a Falling Market Read More »
It’s 8:30am. The index is down sharply, the headlines are unhelpful, and one of your biggest holdings is suddenly off 7% despite no obvious company news. Volatility has returned. This is the moment a lack of process can destroy you. Volatility compresses time and makes decisions that ought to be part of a long-term strategy
Scores on the doors…drumroll please…the portfolio this year has return to form with a very pleasing 25.6% return and a 3.9% dividend yield. This has been the best year on record although as a friend pointed out, it was definitely a year to be overweight UK equities with the FTSE strongly outperforming the S&P 500.
2025 Annual Review – A Portfolio Re-Architecture Read More »
A new learning from an old lesson. A 0.5% position can treble in value and your bottom line will barely move. If the same thing happens to a 5% position, you’ll be dining out for weeks. Your job as a portfolio manager is to react to reality, not cling onto faint hopes. In the third
Fewer, Better, Bolder — Q3 2025 Portfolio Review Read More »
In times of market tumult, when the daily headlines scream fear and the broader public scurries for the exits, the seasoned investor remains calm. For those of us with a long-term horizon and a preference for businesses of enduring substance, such periods offer something truly rare: the opportunity to acquire quality at a discount. In
How to Find Quality Companies During a Market Downturn Read More »
Before we begin, I must extend a word of apology to regular readers for my absence for the past three months. Life, as it sometimes does, has gathered pace – not least due to the demands of a recent promotion in my professional role, as well as the growing commitments of the podcast. Though I
Steady Hands and Seasoned Judgment: Meditations on the Spring Investment Landscape Read More »
As an investor, I am constantly assessing whether the companies I own align with my financial objectives and investment principles. Although I consider myself a long-term investor, I will consider letting go of an investment if the business begins to face significant headwinds or persistent operational issues. Today, I’d like to share a little about
Time to Let Go: Why I’ve Moved on from S4 Capital and NCC Group Read More »
Most investors recognise that holding a diversified portfolio of high-quality assets is a key risk management technique. In today’s article, I want to explore the idea of portfolio diversification as a risk management technique in more detaill – in particular, looking at the pros and cons of diversified portfolio vs. a concentrated portfolio, and how
When I first started writing this blog back in 2015, I was only a few years into my investing journey, and was just starting to get to grips with the world of investing. Since then, I’ve met dozens of private investors in all sorts of circumstances – from social events in Windsor (ever been to
Having started investing over ten years ago, I can now say with reasonable confidence that success takes hard work. Grande Sorpresa. After losing 11% in 2022, I have just managed to squeak out a fantastic 0% return. Yes, that’s right, after a whole year of hard work, I’ve managed to go precisely nowhere (compliments can
During the final week of September, I had two positions, Anglo Asian Mining and Digital 9 Infrastructure Trust drop by 20%+ in a single session. Both rebounded strongly the next day – the proverbial “dead cat bounce” but remain heavily underwater for recent investors. Despite this, I am still holding both companies and in this
Every investor knows the saying that investments can go down as well as up in value. Knowing and seeing this in action are two different things however, and my perception over the last 24 months has been of a huge number of investors disappearing from social media. After a decade of low interest rates and
Being a patient investor in a persistent market downturn Read More »
During the course of publishing this blog, I have previously written two articles about my portfolio review process, the first providing a general insight into my review process and the second providing a more detailed description of my half-year reviews. In today’s article, I’m going to provide more detailed about my quarterly portfolio review process,
Ask most private investors about their opinion of investing in small companies and they will happily tell you that ‘investing in small caps exposes investors to an information mismatch which enables outperformance’. The idea is a simple one. Big funds with professional analysts have too much capital to deploy to worry about investing in companies
It feels like a constant mantra when I sit to write a new article but I hardly know where to start this week. So much has happened that I feel as though I could almost write an article a day and still struggle to keep up with events. Rather than try to dissect all the
