July 2025 Update

Monthly Thoughts

I just read back through a few of my posts over the last year and what became apparent, is nothing much has changed. Negative sentiment about the UK economy, budgets, politicians telling lies, interest rates falling & EV values dropping. As far as my portfolio and net worth, I have been commenting on a long bull market, crypto valuations increasing and personal net worth all time highs. In May ‘24 I discussed gold - everyone was talking about it and my portfolio was light. I still haven’t purchased any. If I had, it would have increased in value by $1000/oz. I blow hot and cold on whether it’s a good idea. Is BTC the new gold? Will gold or BTC usurp the $? How solid is the physical backing on an ETF? What about the spread on physical gold? Maybe I should just stick with equities? My current position is relaxed. Crypto is currently around ~8% of my portfolio, gold ~0.4%, so viewing them both as alternative assets, I’m not completely out of kilter. There is an argument to just be 100% stocks after all. The other option I’m considering is starting a relatively small monthly purchase of gold/BTC. TBD.

Politics (urrgghh)

It was also exactly a year ago I commented on the UK government policies.

The initial decision of the incoming part mostly seem sensible to me, especially the house building and energy policies

One thing that is certain is the country is running out of money quickly

I’ll call that 50/50. The talk sounded good, but the action didn’t match. It turns out, if you want growth, increasing tax and not cutting out of control benefits isn’t the way to do it, but political dogma got in the way.

Outrageous prediction for the UK: No-one in power seems to understand what a hair-on-fire emergency this is. Politicians can’t effect change and voters don’t want change, therefore the only way is down, until a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ catastrophe occurs. Lets hope I’m wrong.

Vital Viewing

An unbelievably underrated band and a riveting performance - Yeasayer: https://youtu.be/qGD656nAyYA

JL Collins wisdom. Watching this from start to finish will explain to anyone how to create wealth and answer all the ‘yeah but’s’ that inevitably get asked. https://youtu.be/V360AygOv7A

Net Worth Comments

The positive run continues, with crypto also now picking up further. It WILL come to an end soon. We’re due a fallow year or two, so I’m getting psychologically ready for some action and prepping by making an elaborate plan. A plan to do absolutely nothing different to what I’m doing at the moment. That is, buy a global tracker every month with any spare cash. Judging by the behaviour of some people during the tariff market blip in April, there’s going to be carnage. How quickly humans forget and how quickly they get used to situations. BHAG2 (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) has been comfortably passed. Onwards to BHAG3. It seems like quite a way to go, but using a compound interest calculator shows it will be a little over 2 years away.