Five meetings this week, spread across a prospect discovery, a couple of onboarding check-ins, an annual review, and a long-standing client check-in over coffee. On the surface, very different conversations — a business sale generating life-changing wealth, a retiree navigating her husband's care, a newly-retired couple finding their feet, and a prospect arriving with a perfectly good financial life but no real map of it. Underneath, though, four themes kept pulling the conversations in the same direction.

Those paying attention to the news in recent weeks may have noticed some alarming headlines about UK government borrowing costs. UK government bond (‘gilt’) yields, readers were told, were surging. Then, just as quickly, they were falling again. It can all feel rather unsettling, especially when it appears to be tangled up with political events close to home.

Two meetings stood out this week — a home visit to a long-standing client approaching a milestone birthday, and an annual planning session with one of the most financially self-aware people I work with. Very different circumstances, different parts of the country, different chapters of life. And yet by the end of the week, I found myself turning over the same three ideas. Here they are.

Your adviser plays an important role as your investment coach. This series of short notes explores six ways a good adviser can add real value to a client’s investment programme.

Four days, five meetings, and an investment committee thrown in for good measure. Two annual planning meetings with long-established clients confirmed, once again, what the numbers have been saying for a while. A brief check-in with a client in the middle of a complex structural wind-down. A catch-up with a younger client navigating significant personal change. And a morning spent with our investment philosophy partners reviewing the portfolios in proper detail. Between them, three themes kept resurfacing.

Three meetings across four days — a financially sophisticated business owner who arrived with a sprawling portfolio and left with a consolidation plan and a clearer view of the estate she wants to build for her family; an 80-year-old at a financial crossroads, with a flat to sell, a generous instinct, and a quiet but serious question about care costs; and a long-standing client who arrived with the low-level dread that he might be running out of money, and left with something he had not expected to feel: relief. Between them, they covered a remarkable amount of ground. Here are the three themes that stayed with me.

Your adviser plays a key role as your investment coach. This series of short notes will explore six ways that a good adviser will bring true value to a client’s investment programme.

Three very different meetings this week — a deep retirement implementation session with a couple on the cusp of drawing down, an advanced planning conversation with a tech entrepreneur wrestling with crypto and corporate cash, and a coffee with a prospect who arrived frustrated and left, hopefully, with a clearer picture. Between them, they covered a remarkable amount of ground. Here are the themes that stuck with me.

Some weeks in financial planning feel fairly routine — portfolio reviews, a bit of tax housekeeping, the usual quarterly check-in. And then there are weeks like this one.

Your adviser plays a key role as your investment coach. This series of short notes will explore six ways that a good adviser will bring true value to a client’s investment programme.

A week of annual planning meetings. Two very different clients. One unmistakable theme running through both.

Your adviser plays a key role as your investment coach. This series of short notes will explore six ways that a good adviser will bring true value to a client’s investment programme.

You adviser plays a key role as your investment coach. This series of short notes will explore six ways that a good adviser will bring true value to a client’s investment programme.

On Monday morning, after a weekend of headlines and a terrible night in Asian markets, the FTSE 100 was down nearly 3% …

 Then Donald Trump opened his mouth. And so, before we even reached lunchtime, the market had turned positive for the day, and spent the rest of the afternoon acting as if nothing had happened

Your adviser plays a key role as your investment coach. This series of short notes will explore six ways that a good adviser will bring true value to a client’s investment programme.

A reflection on the week's conversations, the questions clients are raising, and what they tell us about where people's minds are right now.

Returns over the past few days - since the latest escalation - are, as expected, noisier. A handful of trading days during a geopolitical shock rarely provide meaningful insight. Markets are simply repricing risk as new information becomes available, and they will continue to do so.

When headlines turn dramatic, it’s natural for investors to feel uneasy. The recent escalation between Israel, the United States and Iran — including coordinated strikes and multiple retaliations across the region — has dominated global news cycles and understandably raised questions.

Naturally, first and foremost my thoughts are with the people directly affected. From an investment perspective, however, the story is far more measured than the headlines suggest.

I have often referred to the way my firm invests as being a systematic approach. By this, I simply mean that we follow a disciplined, rules‑based, unemotional process. Markets move up and down all the time, and it can be tempting to try to react to every headline or short‑term change. Yet history shows that repeatedly guessing what markets or individual companies will do next is extremely difficult, even for professionals.

Generally speaking, investors face two choices: being a part-owner of businesses around the world (stocks), or lending money to companies and governments (bonds). Funds are simply combinations of stocks and/or bonds in a mix that meets the mandate of the respective fund.

There is a finite number of listed stocks and available bonds, yet – interestingly - there are more stock funds than there are stocks themselves! The investment industry is increasingly competitive and the number of funds available continues to rise – it is evident that having a sensible process for selecting what funds should be included in an investor’s portfolio is key for investing success.