It’s the Middle East again.
I don’t have any perspective on it, sadly, other than that I hear of some nasty low level youth violence/intimidation/vandalism in North London in Jewish neighbourhoods by pro-Palestinian, dare-I-say-it pro-Hamas hotheads. But in most of London life carries on unchanged.
Markets fell pretty painfully in October. USA/S&P wasn’t as badly hit as other market, thank goodness, but my weighted markets still fell by 2.3%. If there is a non-zero chance of a major regional conflict developing, and/or a chance that Russia gets to have its wicked way with Ukraine after all, then I think the markets have underreacted. But that’s apparently typical at the onset of geopolitical disasters.
In any case, my portfolio managed to drop by 3.2%. My underperformance I think was at least partly caused by Google’s 7.5% drop in the face of some awkward disclosures they are making in their US anti-trust hearings.
As well as a decent dollop of dividends in October, I had a small bit of ‘windfall’ (ish) liquidity this month, as I took advantage of an opportunity to sell some of an angel shareholding via a ‘secondary’ transaction – i.e. selling some shares to another investor. This investment was made under EIS, so is tax free. It’s the equivalent of a few months’ worth of my interest charges, so it’s welcome, but not needle-moving. There are precious few exits / liquidity opportunities in the private/angel world at the moment, which was a factor in deciding to take up the offer to partially offload. For more insight into my psychology check out my recent blog post on Feeling Broke.
I finish the month underweight cash (/overweight margin loan), a bit overweight US equities and underweight international equities. This is a pretty familiar posture.
Appendix: In the media
FIRE v London 