Keen viewers of my ‘What will happen in 2026’ video will know that I, unsurprisingly, predicted that the stock market will go down at some point this year. Is that a reason to panic or to batten down the hatches? No, because the rule and lesson of history is that they cannot go up at very pleasing and attractive rates for ever. In the same way, they can’t and won’t go down forever. When you’re on Easy Street, it’s easy to forget that in 2022 everything was down, the US by over 20%. The conversations we were having then were, interestingly, very similar to many now: ‘Should we pull out before we lose it all (then)/ while we’re ahead (now). In 2025 ‘equity funds recorded their worst year on record with investors withdrawing £6.7bn over the year as concerns over valuations, policy risk and market concentration drove a sustained move away from risk assets’. However…boring experience shows time and again that trying to time the market is a gamble or at best an each-way bet. Make sure you have enough in cash to ride out the inevitable storms, hang on in there and you really will be OK. And I’m saying this at a time when for most their investments really are OK!
Budget Rumours and Possibilities
The Budget Rumour Machine is not the shambles it was last year. Before Rachel’s Swansong all sorts of stuff was leaked to see what sort of puddle it would create.
