Weekly Investment Update

If you listened only to the economic headlines, you might conclude that businesses and consumers are struggling. Inflation remains a concern, interest rates are elevated, and geopolitical uncertainty continues to dominate the news.

As we enter the final quarter of 2026, there are good reasons to remain optimistic about global equity markets. Despite geopolitical uncertainty, concerns about valuations and questions over the sustainability of the artificial intelligence boom, the underlying fundamentals of listed companies remain encouraging...

We want to tell you a story, a true story, about a young boy and his life journey.His father died when he was five years old. His mother went to work every day, leaving him to help feed his younger siblings. Childhood offered little leisure. By twelve, he had left school. At thirteen, after a troubled relationship with his stepfather, he left home.

Albert Einstein is often quoted as saying that “compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world.”What this quote understands is something fundamental about investing: compounding can turn relatively ordinary returns into extraordinary results, provided you give it enough time.The basic idea is simple. You earn a return not only on the money you originally invested, but also on the returns you have already made.

Every great technological revolution creates two things: new industries and new fortunes. It is the second of these that investors can sometimes overlook.The industrial revolution created the Carnegies and the Rockefellers. The personal computer created a generation of technology entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. The internet produced extraordinary wealth for the founders, employees and early investors in companies such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google. More recently, Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies created another, younger cohort of millionaires.

For decades, gold has been treated by many investors as an eccentric investment, something to buy if you fear inflation, financial crisis or the end of the world. But the evidence increasingly points to a much simpler conclusion: gold should be a permanent part of a diversified investment portfolio.

US government borrowing costs have been rising again. That sounds alarming. Higher bond yields are often interpreted as a warning that investors are losing confidence in America’s finances, its central bank or its ability to control inflation.

BJ Fogg has spent more than 25 years studying an apparently simple question: why do people do what they do?Fogg founded Stanford University’s Behavior Design Lab and wrote the bestselling book ‘Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything’. His central idea is that lasting change rarely begins with a heroic burst of motivation. It begins by making the desired behaviour so small and easy that it becomes difficult not to do.His entertaining TEDx talk, “Forget Big Change, Start With a Tiny Habit”, explains the method through examples such as flossing one tooth or doing two push-ups to start the new habit. It sounds almost comically insignificant. That is precisely the point.

Many investors continue to be concerned that we could be living through an AI-led bubble in investment markets. Our view is that this discussion is extremely premature.AI may eventually produce a bubble. Almost every transformative technology attracts excessive investment at some point. But the important question is not whether excess could develop, it is whether today’s market resembles the final stages of a speculative boom.