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July ’25: New high watermark

2025-08-16 FIRE v LondonLeave a comment

There wasn’t a huge amount to report from July.

Politically/economically I fear the most important event in the UK was the Labour government’s failure to enact its intended welfare reforms. This leaves the government a) unable to control spending b) unable to nudge the economy towards more jobs and more growth and c) facing politically expensive tax rises later in the year. For now, this hasn’t impacted the stats or portfolio very much, but it will have more of an impact over the next few years.

Meanwhile, it was a nice pleasant summer month in the UK. I managed to get to Wimbledon for the semi finals, which was a delight. I also explored the bird sanctuary at Arne, near Poole, and other bits of Dorset. I even visited Italy, which was surprisingly good value for money.

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April 2025 – balmy weather, barmy markets

2025-05-242025-05-24 FIRE v London4 Comments

Better late than never, I’m doing a quick update on April. More for the record than because anything particularly notable happened in the portfolio, ignoring the mid month gyrations.

It was a lovely month, April. I did a bit of travelling, but the UK had generally lovely spring weather – as the photos illustrate. I find a consequence of having both the Dream Home in London, and the Coastal Folly is that when the weather is lovely I can really begrudge being in London – a relatively new feeling for me I must admit.

*How did a non-London city picture get into this blog?*

As I write this, it’s almost the end of May, so rambling around April market performance doesn’t feel like it’s going to be of much interest to anybody. In fact with a week of May to go, the S&P has recovered from the Trump TariFFS episode. The key point is that Trump announced a u turn / 90 day pause in his tariff plan, which the markets took as a reason to return to normal. Go figure. Since when has Very Bad News in 90 days’ time been discounted away to practically zero?

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Nov ’24: 3x

2024-12-072024-12-08 FIRE v London5 Comments

London life

I’ve been keeping busy as winter in London sets in. The Christmas lights are all out and looking resplendent, and both the West End and the City are feeling pretty buzzy. For all the general ‘UK stuck in the weeds’ economic commentary, we feel a long way from any talk of recession.