Tag: stocks

Jan ’26: Greenland saga doesn’t disrupt tax bill

FIRE v London2 Comments

January media seemed dominated by Greenland and Davos. As part of my efforts to avoid amplifying unstable narcissistic media-whore leaders, I haven’t got much to comment about. London has been pretty wet and miserable, as is January’s reputation.

Meanwhile, markets were up quite a bit in January, for those of us measuring in GBP. This is despite widespread mayhem over Greenland – which the markets shugged off – albeit with a mid-month wobble.

Mid-month wobble around 20 Jan

My target allocation’s markets grew 2.4% on a constant currency basis. But their currencies fell by 1.4%, meaning my benchmark rose 1.0%. Against that my actual portfolio was flat. I am a little bit underweight USA equities, and a little bit overweight International equities, which in theory is not a bad tactical position to be in. In any case, I took a couple of hits on larger individual holdings.

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Oct ’25: Trim, trim & trim

FIRE v London1 Comment

October in the markets was one of those slightly giddy months. My portfolio crossed through a big number threshold, and kept going up.

The market stats don’t quite tell the whole story. On a constant currency basis, markets rose 2.8%. Non-UK currencies (AUD, EUR, USD) rose (versus the GBP) about 1.7% too. So my weighted benchmark rose 4.6%, measured in GBP. My (leveraged) portfolio‘s rise of 5.3% is roughly in line with that.

A 5% gain in one month is pretty extraordinary, but it does happen. While October was the best month since January 2023 (+6.6%), I have had 7 better months in the last 13 years.

However, what the market stats don’t show is what it really felt like in October.

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The stocks & shares ‘property’ portfolio, one year on

FIRE v London4 Comments

A year ago this week I sold my Modern Flat. And shortly afterwards, I reinvested £500k into a liquid stocks/shares portfolio with a property-like mandate. One year on, here’s a short review of the performance.

The portfolio has been set up to spit out £2000 pcm, which I take into general household expenses. This amounts to a 4.8% withdrawal yield on the £500k initial portfolio value.

What’s happened?

I ran out of money once, by about £100. As it happened, when that happened I ended up receiving a dividend on the 31st of the month which meant I had *not* in fact ran out of money, but by then I had already lent the portfolio the money to cover. I charged the portfolio £50 of interest costs for the trouble.

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