Tag: Investing philosophy

Sep ’25: Gains continue, and I trim

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September was a busy month.

In the middle of it we saw a disruptive tube strike. I don’t use the tube that much so didn’t expect it to affect me much but two important meetings were postponed, one of which still hasn’t happened, so that event has stayed in my memory. Thank goodness for rental bikes – Lime in particular played a blinder by ‘flooding the zone’ around train stations in particular.

The evenings are drawing in. But that does afford a new view of central London – there aren’t too many of those around – at the new development at Paddington station.

I took in my first concert at Wigmore Hall, a little central London treasure that has somehow passed me by for decades.

Piano concert at Wigmore Hall, London
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My exits – a post mortem

FIRE v London10 Comments

Readers will know that I dabble with active investing – I pick stocks.

Lord, make me passive, but not yet

Rather like The Investor at Monevator, I firmly believe in the merits of low cost index tracking as an investment strategy, but I also enjoy the thrills / intellectual excitement of deviating from the true path.

Over the years I have owned dozens of ‘single line’ stocks. These days, partly due to my competing desire to reduce complexity, I have a rather simpler portfolio with ‘only’ around 25 single company holdings.

One question I have wondered about for a while is: what happened to those stocks I used to own, but have ‘exited’? Was I right to exit them? Are the stocks I continue to hold better than the ones I used to own?

A full analysis of this question is beyond the scope of my blog or, for that matter, my abilities.

But let’s start with Facebook.

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Oct ’24: Budgets & broad shoulders

FIRE v London1 Comment

I haven’t seen much of London in October.

I’ve been away every weekend in October, partly in the UK and partly visiting friends overseas.

And now we’re in November, the clocks have gone back, but temperatures haven’t plummeted yet. London feels busy – pubs still have crowds outside.

Finally, the UK’s first Labour budget for 15 years

The big UK political/market news of the month was the new government’s mucn anticipated budget on 30th October. Monevator’s summary is excellent.

What Monevator doesn’t mention is how relentlessly gloomy the runup to the budget was. The government has been clear:

  1. Taxes are going up, because despite electoral statements to the contrary, those naughty Tories left a ‘black hole’ which, despite numerous commenters pointing out before the election, the Labour highups hadn’t seen coming
  2. but the key taxes (Income Tax, National Insurance, VAT, Corporation Tax) are not going up, and ‘working people’ (a phrase subject to amusing and relentless parsing in the pre budget runup) are not going to pay more tax
  3. leaving those who are not ‘working people’ (implication – people with unearned income; they mean us, FIREees) and those with the ‘broadest shoulders’ to pay more tax. Capital gains tax was clearly going to rise, as well as potentially tightening of tax-free pension mechanisms. Non doms were a particular target, as are (those paying for) private schools. In a parallel government narrative universe, the government also was clear it is working to boost private sector investment and woo business – which somehow sounds different from ‘broad shoulders’ doesn’t it?
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