The first thing to report is that Molly “The Tiny Terrorist” passed her GCSEs with flying colours!
It is interesting to be involved in such potentially dual future events and as I sat after her results alone with my recent helpers, the bottle and the pills (of juice and vitamins), a comparison with Titanic came to mind.
The iceberg had been avoided, the good ship TT sails now serenely on to A levels and beyond, and the disaster that could have been never was.
In the case of the Titanic only a tiny distance separated it from missing its iceberg and if it had, no one would now know its name; it would now be scrap metal, no films, no dreadful Celine Dion song and Leonardo de Caprio would be just another once pretty boy that got old and fat.
The vagaries of fate hey…..
ICEBERGS POSSIBLY AHOY!
After a period of relatively plain sailing and with QE providing a tail wind of assistance, we are potentially approaching more testing waters.
- The tapering of the QE programme in the US is vexing markets.
- The Syrian situation now looks to have moved from ugly (but not the West’s problem) to a humanitarian outrage and something to which basic decency demands an intervention.
- The Emerging markets are wobbly due to the Chinese slow down, and the fear that the carry trade of cheap money being used to buy higher yielding assets (emerging bonds and currencies) will unwind as Western interest rates move higher.
- The increase in the longer dated Treasury market (US) again because the belief is that interest rates have bottomed and will rise shortly.
MOST OF THE TIME WE MISS THEM!
The reality of history is that the number of worries massively exceeds the occurrence of the concerns; in Titanic terms, many many thousands of icebergs are imagined a very few are hit.
Markets will be affected for a time as they are gripped by the latest potential problems but time passes and so usually do the concerns, to be inevitably replaced by new ones.
This is natural; the fear of change and the knock on effects of those changes causes worry.
It seems fairly pointless to worry too much that things will change because along with mortality and taxes it is inevitable and unavoidable.
If, as with the Tiny Terrorist, nothing bad actually comes to pass then one can content oneself with the thought that maybe the worry was worth it, that it somehow warded off a bad outcome.
A friend of mine once told me that he was ok with being panicked on aircraft because he felt that somehow if he stopped worrying then the plane would actually crash.
Now, if you will excuse me I need to book into rehab!
NOTE: This is written in a personal capacity and reflects the view of the author. It does not necessarily reflect the view of LWM Consultants. The post has been checked and approved to ensure that it is both accurate and not misleading. However, this is a blog and the reader should accept that by its very nature many of the points are subjective and opinions of the author. This is not a recommendation to buy any product or service including any share or fund mentioned. Individuals wishing to buy any product or service as a result of this blog must seek advice or carry out their own research before making any decision, the author will not be held liable for decisions made as a result of this blog (particularly where no advice has been sought). Investors should also note that past performance is not a guide to future performance and investments can fall as well as rise.