April ’24: Juggling cash as new UK tax year begins

FIRE v London3 Comments

The temperature in the Middle East got even hotter in April, with Israel and Iran trading attacks on each other’s sovereign buildings/territory. Somehow World War III has never really seemed in danger of breaking out but it is a reminder that only change is constant.

Over in New York Donald Trump was falling asleep in court. You have to hand it to him he knows how to stay in the headlines.

The markets in April

Meanwhile the UK stock market continues to fill newspapers for the wrong reasons. Amidst all the doom and gloom – heightened at the end of the month by the takeover of Darktrace, a rare UK tech stock – you might have missed that the FTSE-100 is not only at a record level but in fact outperfomed other markets significantly in April.

All the markets seem to want to know now is when interest rates are coming down, and how fast. April saw expectations of cuts dampened / postponed, which appears to have dampened valuations of both equities and bonds. In the US this was heightened by an increasing sense that the AI-driven tech boom may have got a bit ahead of itself – there is still little to show for concrete extra revenue / cost savings (bar a few notables such as Klarna) but plenty of increased infrastructure spending.

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Mar ’24: A towering influence

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I’ve enjoyed March.

I managed to enjoy a few days’ skiing, despite less snow than any of us would like, in the Austrian alps.

Back at home, the sun has been getting stronger, and the evenings have been getting lighter – and now with Summer Time we will enjoy lovely late evenings for six months.

And I’ve been reflecting recently on a key influence in my life – the author James Clavell.

I remember as a child in the early 1980s being astonished that my mother could take on a 1300+ page book. Shogun, Clavell’s third key novel, had just been televised into a TV miniseries – the first western production ever filmed in Japan, apparently – starring Richard Chamberlain. I enjoyed the miniseries enough that soon enough I was reading the book myself – and I was gutted when, after those 1300+ pages, it finished.

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Feb ’24: Envyidia

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I’ve had quite a lot of culture to enjoy in February.

Aside from some travel for the Six Nations rugby, I’ve been to two shows – one in London’s Royal Opera House and one on the south coast.

Thanks to HMG for the subsidy

Both events were either full or practically full. Covid feels fully behind us now. But the prices have stayed with us.

A cultural lighthouse

I was struck by the demographic difference between these two nights out. I know, I know, the demographics of opera and concerts are not a fully reliable guage. But I was practically the youngest person in the audience at Poole’s Lighthouse concert hall, whereas I felt 2nd quartile old in London’s Royal Opera House. Is this a reflection of where the money sits – with retirees only in Dorset, and with well-heeled workers and tourists in London? A rhetorical question, for now.

Markets in February 2024

The USA stock market continued to be the main story in February.

Though if you were paying attention, the Japanese market has been setting new records too – the Nikkei 225 is up 20% Year to Date.

It wasn’t just Japan that’s booming, with Asia ex Japan up 4.5% in February itself. Over in Europe and Australia we had much less excitement; Europe ex UK was up 2.8%, Australia up only 1.2% and the misery-guts UK’s market rose only 0.5%.

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