March 2025 Update

Current Thoughts

Markets have been a tad tumultuous over the last month. Even usually stable global trackers have been varying comparatively wildly. In summary this is caused, as per last month, by global uncertainties mostly around US tariffs. Markets hate uncertainty and I’m happy to take advantage. The most likely outcome from all of this is that in 5 years time, the tariff drama will be a forgotten footnote in history.

Politics isn’t my favourite subject, but it has to be noted how annoyingly out of touch politicians are from reality. Recent examples:

  • setting housebuilding targets that although laudable, are completely unrealistic with the UK’s current skills shortages
  • asking for backdoors into encrypted servers (and Apple refusing, and instead removing encryption from all UK users). This isn’t the first time they showed they have zero understanding of what encryption is used for and how it works either, ref David Cameron 2015, Amber Rudd 2017
  • saying the UK wants to be ‘one of the great AI superpowers’, so it’s going to build a datacentre by 2030. Yes, five whole years away (xAI set up it’s 100,000 H100 datacentre ‘Colossus’ - an unprecedented technical feat - in 122 days). I guess at least the UK government has a track record of finishing projects on time . . no?

I can’t help but think they should either employ better advisors or listen to the ones they have (I’m not sure which it is).

Vital Viewing

If Rachel Reeves’ spring statement seemed a bit lacklustre, imagine what could have been https://youtu.be/3xK44urpZ-U

If Donald Trump seems like a loose cannon, remember the team he has advising him https://youtu.be/lSma9suyp24

Net Worth Comments

The chart moves upwards again. This has been caused by additional cash, not by the market, which is down further from last month (see the APR figures). I’ve been through a buying phase as a recent bonus added to my cash position. This deployment still hasn’t finished and as I type VWRL took a -1.6% dive yesterday (Friday 28th March). I’ll try and take advantage of this on Monday.

Note, that I made a minor error on my Shares/Bond APR figures from the last few months (a missed purchase transaction). This has been corrected below.