Introduction
In this Money & Mischief blog, Steven Rowe invites you to pick up something far more meaningful than your phone: a visitors’ book. Not just any visitors’ book, mind you but the kind you find in a charming B&B somewhere rainy, remote, and perfect for doing absolutely nothing productive.
As Steven reflects on these handwritten time capsules of happiness, he makes the case for a life guided by joy, not market fluctuations. Spoiler alert: there’s not a single mention of checking your pension on a long weekend.
Choose your happiness from the visitor’s book menu
Who doesn’t like a relaxing break? I’m not talking about your annual big holiday. I’m thinking more of your occasional weekend away. Probably in the UK, in a relaxing destination, where you can pause, unwind and take a brief moment of respite from your frenetic and busy life.
You’re with me now, aren’t you? And I’m sure you can picture the scene where in such a place you sit down with a cuppa as it’s raining / too hot outside (it’s never Goldilocks is it?!) and you pick up the visitors’ book. And you start to read the synopsis of the trips of numerous people that have stayed, where you are ensconced right now.
Have you ever sat back and truly read them? The scribe is writing when they are their happiest and most relaxed self. There is very little, if any, negativity. The cynical may suggest that the hotelier has ripped out those pages! But also, as you turn each page, it exhales like the breath of the guest that writes or reads the contents. And content I am, as I read about the joyful times people have had. Celebrating anniversaries, cashing in a wedding gift, Father’s Day, or stories of just taking the time. Time for adventure in scaling a mountain, or time for a pint and for yourself to destroy your partner at Scrabble. Then, sit back to stare at the wonder of the stars, as every human that has ever existed has and think - I am sooo small, nothing I do has any consequence, why do I worry?
All wholesome, family fun! I’ve never, not once, found a visitors’ book saying, ‘so glad I got time to doom scroll social media’ Or ‘it’s the perfect place to just sit back, and fire off some work emails.’ And finally, it’s also never said “hunker down and check your investments.”
The Visitors book tells us what we love! It’s like a menu for improvement of the soul. Which bits you choose are up to you! But they will all surely lead to a happier life. Is it to spend more time with family? Is it to stare at the stars / moon / sun rise or set and contemplate? Is it to celebrate every occasion that could be celebrated?!
“And my only boss was the clock on the wall and my only friend, Never really was a friend at all”
Jim Croce - Age
Dear old Jim has the best lyrics, I do urge you listen to him, he died in a plane crash at age 30, so time certainly wasn’t a friend to him.
And it’s not to you either. If, at the end of your life you had a couple of hours with a cuppa to write your very own ‘Visitors Book,’ what would you write?
Why not give it a go? That can be your Manifesto for a happier life. To achieve it, you only have to listen to yourself.
Anything that doesn’t deserve to be in your very own Visitors Book, should you really be doing? Rip it out, like the hotelier would!
Anything you do write in your Visitors Book - do more of it!
Now, if you’ve heeded my advice in the early part of this missive, then you’ll be off out having fun! I can imagine you have ditched the iPad/phone and legged it out the house to go do something less boring instead! But, if you want to learn something about investments then stick around as going to write about stock markets in first half of 2025, which were a tumultuous first six months of this very eventful year.
As always, let’s first remember a handful of the timeless truths about enduringly successful wealth management principles that guide our work together toward your goals. Then we can proceed to some more current observations.
General principles
- We are goal-focused, plan-driven, long-term equity investors. Our portfolios are derived from, and driven by, your most important lifetime financial goals, not any view of the economy or the markets. Your ‘Visitors Book’ determines how successful your investments will be, not the outside world.
- We don’t believe the economy can be consistently forecast, or the markets consistently timed.
- Nor do we believe it is possible to gain any advantage by going in and out of the equity market, regardless of current conditions.
- We therefore believe that the most efficient method of capturing the full premium compound return of equities is by remaining fully invested all the time.
- We are thus prepared to ride out the equity market’s frequent, often significant but historically always temporary declines.
- We believe that even during such trying episodes, our reinvested dividends will be buying more lower-priced shares and that the power of equity compounding will be continuing, to our long-term benefit.
So, what’s been going on?
- If you looked at the equity market on the first trading day of this year, and not again until the end of June, you could be forgiven for concluding that not much if anything had happened. In fact, a great deal happened but at least so far, to no lasting effect.
- The S&P 500 Index made a new all-time high on February 19th. By April 8th, it had closed 18.9% lower.
- And even that doesn’t express the degree of sheer panic there’s no other word for it that enveloped the markets upon President Trump’s announcement (on April 2) of a dramatically increased tariff protocol.
- The panic ended just as abruptly after Mr. Trump announced a 90-day postponement of most of the new tariffs. And in the seven weeks or so since then buoyed by continued strength in the economy and signs that inflation may be continuing to moderate the Index returned to the vicinity of its early January levels.
- As it virtually always is, the optimal course of action for long-term investors was simply to continue working your plan. That’s what we encouraged you to do. And as the second half of the year begins, that recommendation stands.
- Please don’t mistake this for an economic or market outlook. We have no such forecast for the next six months, any more than we did on January 1.
- Our only forecast is that excellent businesses of the kind we all own will go on innovating over time increasing their earnings, raising their dividends, and supporting our clients’ pursuit of their long-term goals.
- Panic doesn’t often seize the investing public as suddenly as it did in the first week of April, nor vanish as suddenly as it did the following week. Still, this episode can and should serve as a kind of tutorial.
Its lesson:
Investors succeed over time by continuously working their plan regardless of the current “crisis.”
Others fail by reacting to negative events and liquidating even the highest quality equities at panic prices. We believe that’s always the fundamental choice in investing, and our mission which we cherish is to help you continue to choose wisely.
