Capital Compass: Can Starmer Labour on?
And why ousting him is so difficult Sometimes the UK seems like the epitome of political uncertainty. Not least in the last few weeks, as Labour’s disastrous local election results have raised very real questions about Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s future. To give UK readers a crumb of comfort, it is worth remembering that, […]
Capital Compass: Stuck in Neutral
Challenging the rulebook keeps you moving There is a need for continual innovation, update and renewal. As we wrote last week, few of us are decisive – we would like to be, but we often wait for others to make up their minds, while they wait for us to do the same. The result is […]
Capital Compass: The Fine Art of Procrastination…
…and the importance of ‘doing’ Many of us enjoy spending money, but when it comes to organising our spending and savings, our enthusiasm quickly evaporates. Financial administration is widely regarded as dull, and people will go to remarkable lengths to postpone putting their affairs in order. This might include paying a bill, contributing to a […]
Capital Compass: Breaking Bad Models
Heisenberg shows formulas don’t survive real-world uncertainty In classical physics, as practised by Sir Isaac Newton, we learn that if you know a few key variables and apply force, then you can predict an outcome. The same is true for investing. Many investment advisers will tell you that by putting x amount aside you will […]
Capital Compass: Who Wants to Be an ISA Millionaire?
The disciplined path to long-term, tax-free wealth When Nigel Lawson introduced the Personal Equity Plan (PEP) on 1st January 1987, few imagined it would one day create a cohort of more than 10,000 millionaires. With an annual allowance of just £2,600, most saw it as marginal. The PEP’s successor – the Individual Savings Account (ISA), […]
Capital Compass: “Unsafe as Housing”
Is Vistry the canary in the coalmine? The Sunday Times reported recently that housebuilder Vistry Group had halted payments to its suppliers, as its leadership struggled with a severe cash squeeze. An important part of the government’s push to build more housing, Vistry’s precarious position offers a stark window into not just its own internal failings, […]
Capital Compass: March MADness
The Cold War deterrent is being replaced A tenet of the Cold War was the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD. This constrained Americans and Russians alike, with both sides maintaining relative peace until the fall of the Berlin Wall. Trump’s version of MAD is “hard power”: cross America and you will be destroyed. […]
Capital Compass: Epic Fury
How might the conflict in the Gulf unfold? In the run-up to the first Gulf War, with images of desperate South Vietnamese mobbing the US embassy for the last chopper out of Saigon still fresh in the US collective consciousness, the Powell Doctrine was drawn up. This military doctrine, named after General Colin Powell, argued […]
Capital Compass: Remember, Remember, the Fifth of…April
Our guide to the tax year end The tax year end used to fall on Lady Day, 25th March, in the old Julian calendar, when rents, debts and taxes were traditionally settled. Over time, the Julian calendar drifted by about 11 minutes per year compared with the more accurate Gregorian calendar, which had been adopted […]
Capital Compass: Claude Computing
How a few plugins shook the tech world We may think software companies represent the future of business. For years, software-as-a-service (SaaS) has been one of the great places to make money in the stock market. However, at the beginning of the month, we were reminded that every industry faces creative destruction after Anthropic’s Claude […]