Worldwide Financial Planning

The BoE expects price rises in areas like domestic energy and water bills to lift inflation up towards 4% this year. But its view that any acceleration will be temporary opens to door to more aggressive rate cuts this year. If the bank’s forecast is correct this should be supportive of government bond prices and could see further weakness in the pound.

Trump’s economic logic is a mix of old-school protectionism and miscalculated bravado. Tariffs are a tax on consumers, plain and simple. They don’t bring wealth; they just shuffle the costs around and leave people paying more for the same goods.

Despite the sharp dip in AI and microchip stocks, like most recent sell-offs, the recovery has been almost as swift as the decline. As Softbank’s $25bn investment pledge shows, investors fear missing out. It serves as a warning that the eventual leaders in this industry may not be the current favourites.

Being self-congratulatory over a stock which you bought, without understanding it, and seeing its value soar, is the exhilaration of skydiving without having checked your parachute. You can’t blame anyone.

Diworsification, describes excessive diversification which weakens investment returns, increases costs, and makes managing a portfolio unnecessarily complex. It’s the financial equivalent of collecting hundreds of ingredients for a meal and ending up with a tasteless, overpriced dish.

Opinion is divided over whether Trump is serious about imposing tariffs or whether they are just bargaining chips. The threat of tariff was widely anticipated and with the exception of some currencies markets have been positive.