Weekly Investment Update

There is a question that serious investors return to repeatedly, and it has perhaps never felt more pressing: does politics actually matter to your portfolio, or is it simply the most expensive distraction ever invented?

This has been one of the most consequential weeks of the year so far in financial markets, and the conclusions are not as comfortable as equity index levels alone might suggest. Three major central banks sat on their hands, four of the world's largest technology companies reported stunning earnings, a royal visit delivered an unexpected trade gift, and yet the shadow of a partially closed waterway continues to threaten everything.

India is rarely the first market investors reach for when constructing a global equity portfolio. For decades it has sat in the background of emerging market allocations, overshadowed by China’s scale. That calculus is changing, and the launch of the DCS NIFTY 50 Tracker Fund provides a timely opportunity to examine why a dedicated exposure to India may deserve a more deliberate place in a long-term portfolio.

For decades, the financial services industry delivered a consistent message: start saving early, harness compound growth, stay invested through market cycles, and let time do the heavy lifting. Baby Boomers and Silver Surfers did precisely that. They saved, invested, and stayed the course through the dot-com crash, the 2008 financial crisis, and the pandemic shock of 2020. The result is a remarkable concentration of wealth in the hands of a generation that followed the rules. The question now is whether those same rules still apply. The honest answer is that they do not.

The past six weeks have been among the most turbulent in recent memory. A US-Israeli military campaign against Iran pushed the region to the brink of wider war before a ceasefire brokered by Pakistan halted hostilities. The relief was short-lived. Israeli strikes in Lebanon strained the truce almost immediately, and when JD Vance announced that US-Iran talks had collapsed, Trump declared a naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, the largest disruption to world energy supply since the 1970s oil crisis.

The US-Israeli war on Iran, now in its fourth week, is generating real economic turbulence. Global oil prices have surged more than 25 percent, roughly a fifth of global crude and natural gas supply has been suspended, and tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has effectively stalled. Brent crude recently rose to $108.66 a barrel following an Israeli strike on Iran’s South Pars gas field.

Investors in the past two weeks could have benefitted from dusting off their old school literature exercise books and revisiting a poem by Nobel Prize winner Rudyard Kipling: "If". Written in 1910, four years before the First World War broke out, the poem deals with themes from patience and staying calm under pressure to rebuilding after loss. Its lessons feel remarkably, and perhaps uncomfortably, timely.

On 28 February 2026, Israel and the United States launched Operation Epic Fury, nearly 900 strikes in the first twelve hours, targeting Iran's leadership, nuclear programme, missile sites and air defences. The assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei marked the most dramatic opening salvo. Now in its tenth day, the conflict has deepened significantly. Israel's attacks on Iran's energy infrastructure have pushed the war into what Tehran describes as a "new phase," with Iranian strikes hitting targets in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha and Beersheba, and the US embassy in Kuwait struck and closed indefinitely. A US submarine has sunk an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean. The cost to the US alone has been estimated at roughly $1 billion per day.