HindeSight Investment #116 October 2024 - Newsletter
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HINDESIGHT INVESTMENT EDUCATION NEWSLETTER
CONTENTS
OVERVIEW
INVESTMENT INSIGHTS
PORTFOLIO UPDATE
HINDESIGHT DIVIDEND UK PORTFOLIO
OVERVIEW
We pass another Remembrance Sunday to honour our war dead but also to remind us of the futility of war. I have just finished “Rivals in the Storm”-Damian Collins, an excellent read about David Lloyd-George’s WWI memories as he became Prime Minister in 1916 to “win the war”. It was depressing to understand his dislike of Kitchener for his incompetence and especially Field Marshall Haig who he fully believed sent thousands of English soldiers needlessly to their deaths just through ignorance and lack of understanding in WWI warfare. Most people will name Winston Churchill as the greatest British Prime Minister and statesman because of his WWII defiance of Germany but I have always had great admiration for David Lloyd-George, who prior to the First World War was the architect for the “People’s Budget” and the welfare state, bringing his National Insurance Bill before the House of Commons in 1911.
History books are full of tragic events happening as a result of the (wrong) people on the global stage at the time when different paths, options and outcomes were possible and continue to be so. Most of my American friends hail from the East Coast and California tending to be well-educated and with higher incomes which these days seems to make them more inclined to be Democrat voters and anti-Trump, so conversations have been interesting to say the least with Trump’s recent surge back into power. Of course, like anyone I find it staggering that with 330 million inhabitants, the ‘best’ candidates available to voters were Donald Trump and Kamela Harris with all the significant issues that either brought to the table. But, it was no surprise to me that on the day, Trump won, as bad as his baggage is, because he focussed on the two concerns that vibrated with most of the electorate-inflation/cost of living and illegal immigration and has never been afraid of speaking his mind.
I believe future historians will write about the poor politicians that were on the world stage in early 2022 as making the wrong decisions regarding Russia/Ukraine war. Whether the US led neo-cons plan was to bleed Russia at the expense of Ukrainian lives so they could focus on China conflict in time, or not, it certainly hasn’t worked out as the geopolitical fracturing of the BRICS and now CRINKs continues. Will Trump stop the needless slaughter in Ukraine by forcing a ‘peace’ deal as war funding stops? As a deal-maker, that would make more sense than doing a ‘Douglas Haig’ in this drone war of WWI attrition where nobody ‘wins’. Unfortunately, the potential deal I believe will look considerably less palatable to Ukraine than was offered by Putin to them two years ago before Boris Johnson’s missive to Kyiv put the kybosh on that.
Much of Trump’s popularity has come from his anti- immigration stance and clearly much of Europe is moving in the same direction, whether it be the AfD party in Germany amidst new election chaos, Austria and Italy’s right wing new governments or France’s Le Pen. Sweden’s decade experience with multi-culturalism is clearly descending into a complete disaster with immigrant gang violence at truly shocking levels. The change of government in the UK wasn’t a vote for Labour, it was an anti-Conservative vote where voters felt let down by the lack of immigration progress promised by Brexit. Unfortunately, the Labour politicians think they got it on their own merit!!! Cue much laughter. But, it would appear that we are going to have another four years in the UK with poor quality government politicians making bad decisions. At the moment, those poor decisions are very much being highlighted by the budget and finance strategy.
David Lloyd-George, the 1911 creator of National Insurance will be turning in his grave on seeing Rachel Reeves machinations on the NI changes in the budget, adding £25-40bn extra costs to struggling UK companies to pour into the inefficient state entities like the NHS. Any senior doctor or consultant I have ever met with NHS experience always has the same opinions, too many people playing the system and sucking off the NHS teat with administrators who couldn’t run piss ups in proverbial breweries. Maybe Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves should have a thought about Trump’s most recent appointment of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy,
“Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies - Essential to the 'Save America' Movement."