THE CLIENT DIARY — WEEK OF 7 APRIL 2026

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

The Trigger Nobody Plans For

I've been doing this job long enough to know that retirement rarely happens on schedule, and almost never for the reason the client originally imagined.

This week I had two annual planning meetings, and in both of them — without any prompting from me — the client mentioned a death. Not their own, of course, but someone close. A colleague. A teammate. In one case, a boss who had a stroke at his desk on a Friday and was gone by the following Monday. In the other, a rugby teammate of mine who was 40.

In the first case, it had accelerated a retirement decision by a full year. The client — a senior executive who had spent months trying to negotiate a tidy exit — simply handed in his notice on the 4th of February. He'd had enough. Not of the work, exactly. Of the waiting.

"He was going to stay on," he told me, "just to fund his daughter through a Masters. Another eighteen months." He paused. "I just thought: that's not the deal I want to make."

I find myself having this conversation with increasing frequency. Not morbidly — there's nothing morbid about it. It is, in fact, one of the most grounding conversations our profession gets to have. The question isn't really can you afford to retire? It's can you afford not to?

The Number Is Ready. Are You?

The good news for both clients this week is that the numbers are, broadly, in very good shape. One has been building quietly and methodically for years. The other has the benefit of a long career in financial services and has always known, intellectually, that the plan was working. But there is a difference between knowing something intellectually and believing it in your bones.

One client put it brilliantly. He described the shift from earned income to investment income as needing to learn "the biorhythms of retirement." He's right. When a salary arrives on the 25th of every month, you don't think about it. You just spend. When the money comes from a portfolio you've been watching nervously since Liberation Day last April, it feels different. The mechanics are the same. The psychology is entirely new.

My job, in those early retirement years, is as much about behavioural coaching as it is about tax efficiency. Probably more so.

The Market: A Remarkable 12 Months

All meetings invariably involve a review of investment performance, and I'll be honest — it has been a remarkable 12 months to live through as both an adviser and an investor.

Cast your mind back to early April last year. Liberation Day. The markets fell sharply — anywhere between 15 and 20% depending on your portfolio — as the tariff announcements came through in a scale that even the most pessimistic forecasters hadn't quite anticipated. Then came the gradual rowing back, the softening rhetoric, the trade agreements. Then an AI bubble scare. Then Venezuela, then the US and Israel bombing Iran. Then the Straits of Hormuz.

And yet — and this is the part that still slightly amazes me — we are sitting here in April 2026 with one client portfolio up nearly 22% over the period, and another up 9.3% despite not being fully invested for the whole of it due to transfer delays.

Corrections are getting sharper. They're also getting shorter. COVID took three to six months to recover. The Liberation Day sell-off reversed in weeks. I don't know whether this is because markets are pricing in more information faster, or because the interventions are coming more quickly, or simply because global capital has learned to hold its nerve. Probably all three.

The message I keep repeating — in meetings, in my blogs, on LinkedIn — is this: staying invested is not passive. It is a discipline. It is, in many ways, the hardest thing to do. The clients who get out near the bottom and back in near the top aren't protecting themselves. They're compounding their losses. The clients who sit on their hands, re-read their plan, and do nothing — they are the ones who end up with the remarkable 12-month numbers.

The US Market: Bigger Than You Think

I showed clients the same graphic this week — fresh from the Dimensional Matrix “Playbook” - one I've been using recently to add some context to the geopolitical noise. It maps the global equity market by share, and it never fails to prompt a reaction.

The United States represents 65% of the global market today. When we built our portfolios back in 2010 and launched them in 2011, that figure was 40%. In fifteen years, the US has increased its share of global equity by more than half again.

And within that, Apple — a single company — now represents approximately 4% of the global market. The entire United Kingdom sits at 3%.

That's not a reason to panic. It's context. It explains why whatever happens in Washington has ripple effects on pension funds in Peterborough. It explains why the rhetoric from the White House matters even when it sounds unhinged. And it's also why, for all my frustrations with the current geopolitical backdrop, I'd rather be diversified across 15,000 companies in a rules-based global portfolio than trying to pick the winners from the sidelines.

ESG: An Honest Conversation

This week also prompted an honest conversation about ESG portfolios — one I suspect many advisers are having with clients right now.

The environmental, socially and governance-screened portfolios, which exclude defence manufacturers, arms producers, and most fossil fuel companies, have underperformed their mainstream equivalents over the past 12 months. The reason is straightforward: the sectors they exclude have been among the strongest performers. Oil companies, defence manufacturers, and the support industries around them have all benefited from the current geopolitical environment.

This doesn't mean ESG investing is wrong. It means the short-term performance of any investment strategy is partly a function of which sectors happen to be in favour at any given moment. The time horizon matters enormously. Over the longer term, the evidence for sustainable outperformance of screened portfolios against unscreened ones is, to put it charitably, inconclusive.

I have clients in both types of portfolio. Neither group is making a mistake. They're making a choice, and the choice should be made with clear eyes about what it might mean in any given period.

Don't Put It Off

I keep coming back to where I started. Two clients. Two different financial positions. Two very different life stories. And the same fundamental message underneath all of it.

One of them talked about dreams he and his partner have had for years — Kilimanjaro, campervan trips, extended travel in India and South America. "You want to do Kilimanjaro while you're still nimble," he said. He's absolutely right. There are six routes up that mountain, and some of them are more forgiving than others. But none of them get easier with age.

The other talked about wanting to try something completely different in retirement — a sporadic, paid role co-piloting luxury supercar tours across Europe. Something that combines a passion for cars with the freedom of not needing the income. That's what a well-structured plan makes possible.

I went to the funeral of a 40-year-old two weeks ago. He was a rugby teammate. He had a wife and two nephews he doted on and things he was planning to do. I don't know what they all were but I know he wanted to open a sandwich shop in the Lake District - he’d even designed the menu.

I've been thinking about him this week as I sat opposite these two clients and showed them their numbers.

The numbers, in both cases, were fine.

The question — as always — is what are you going to do with them?

The Client Diary is a personal blog post. Names and identifying details are changed to protect client confidentiality. Nothing here constitutes financial advice.

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