I am writing to you during our office move. Workers are all around busy packing and unpacking boxes. We have been in our old building for 10 years. At the time we moved in there, the S&P was about 880 points and the Dow Jones was about 8300 points. Since then they have gone up by 242% and 244% respectively. Even after a tough year and pretty awful 4^th quarter, the long-term gains are impressive. It may appear as though it was easy to make money however; there were plenty of reasons to be concerned along the way. When we said to clients over the years "focus on the long term", so far, we have been right.

As I tidied my office for the move I found a collection of year-end predictions for years gone by written by some of the highest paid experts in the world. Some were right some of the time; many were wrong most of the time… Some were right in the longer term and very wrong in the short term. It seems no one has the perfect crystal ball. 2018 rollercoaster has been no different but more on that below.

We look forward to hosting you in our new offices at the Amzur building.

Winston Churchill once said of the British that they are a unique nation as “they are the only people who like to be told how bad things are.” The view of many experts these days is that it is difficult to accurately convey how much worse the financial situation could get for the UK in the coming years.

Our first thoughts after seeing Germany’s early exit from the FIFA world cup was that we place too much reliance on Germany for the strength of the Eurozone and maybe we should exercise more caution when allocating money to Europe. The FIFA World Cup has many positive messages for the global economy and we must not be too quick to focus only on the negatives.

2018 so far has been a difficult year for asset allocators, like Pioneer. Across the industry, returns have been difficult and disappointing in absolute terms. In this review, we will try to explain what is happening.

March 2018 has almost ended and it looks like it will be another red month. Client portfolios will be affected. The title of this article is dedicated to one particular client who frustratingly refers to the way his portfolio drifts up and down as “seaweed”. His frustration is real and his concern valid. You are right I say. The term we professionally use for seaweed movement is volatility. Sometimes the tide is strong and the moves are high and sometimes the tide is low and the moves are shallow. My agreement with the client does not help his concern. However, "there is no such thing as absolute positive returns" I say, so let's evaluate our alternatives. Straight line, low risk or risk free, absolute returns for investments are a myth, a marketing term used to lead investors into believing that they should invest in whatever the salesman is offering. "Ok", says the investor. "If returns over time are low and potential for losses seems so high, why should we bother", he asks? "Let me just put my money in cash and forget about it". Then conversation goes back to financial planning basics.

2017 was a good year for risk assets. Risky asset returns surpassed expectations and our clients enjoyed excellent risk-adjusted returns. Now our sights are on 2018. We hope you find our comments on Bitcoin, USA Tax Reform and research on expecting a crisis informative and relevant.