Perspectives
In the UK, inflation is our enemy
May, 2025
Regular readers of Tacit Thoughts will know that we have an almost obsessive focus on real returns: returns after adjusting for inflation. The reason for this is that our clients live in the real world where maintaining (or growing) their purchasing power is most important over any meaningful time frame. Something that astounds us is […]
Why let the facts get in the way of a good story?
May, 2025
Storytelling is deeply ingrained in financial markets because it helps investors make sense of complex, uncertain, and fast-moving environments. Markets are inherently chaotic and unpredictable, and raw data alone can be overwhelming or confusing to most. Narratives simplify this complexity by framing information in a coherent, cause-and-effect story that feels easier to understand and act […]
Beware what you can’t know
May, 2025
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has gone from a concept in most people’s minds to a reality in just over a year. This new technology has very quickly become seamlessly embedded into our everyday lives. If you use WhatsApp you may have noticed the new ‘Meta AI’ functionality over the past month for example, powered by the […]
The lure of big numbers
May, 2025
Investors are often drawn to large nominal returns. The headline figures that are commonly used in marketing and reporting show the total percentage gain on an investment before accounting for inflation, taxes, and fees because these numbers are more visible, easier to understand. Nominal returns provide a straightforward snapshot of performance, making them a […]
The Importance of Investment Composure
April, 2025
Every market downturn is different but its impact on our behaviour is consistent. Investment composure is one way in which an investor’s behaviour can be measured and forms part of our risk profiling exercise when any prospective client engages with Tacit. Market ups and downs are a normal part of investing. It’s natural to feel […]
Lessons from this week
April, 2025
The world was expecting the second presidential term of Donald Trump to take an unconventional and rough tackle approach to most issues, but what we have witnessed in little over the past week goes far beyond what even members of his own inner circle had envisaged. Equity and bond markets fell in tandem as the […]
Good, bad, or just different?
April, 2025
Following strong positive returns in 2024, all Tacit strategies have delivered broadly flat returns in 2025 to date. This is during a period in which global equities, as measured by the MSCI World Index, have fallen 5.4% for sterling investors. Volatility has increased markedly this year as investors have reassessed the thesis that US exceptionalism […]
Rachel Reeves: A Zugzwang Spring Statement 2025
March, 2025
The chart below illustrates just one of the major dilemmas facing a British government of any persuasion: how to balance the inexorable rise in healthcare costs against the increasingly urgent need to bolster the defence of the realm? Spending on health, even accounting for the squeeze on funding after 2020, is by far the largest […]
History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme
March, 2025
The Dot Com bubble which ended in the year 2000 can provide an alternative insight into the recent equity market volatility being experienced by investors and can also illustrate why certain markets have risen whilst the US equity market has come under pressure so far this year. In normal circumstances, a falling US equity market […]