Sit tight

Dominic Thomas
April 2025 • 2 min read

Sit Tight

What the global markets are currently experiencing is not new. It is only different in the sense that it’s utterly pointless and caused by one particular individual. That in itself suggests that ‘the system’ is very flawed and if I could change it I would – but I can’t and neither can you.

Our regulator would want you to know that a 10% fall has happened – it hasn’t yet, but frankly by the time you read this, it may have done. Knowing that doesn’t help. In fact, I would argue that you are better off switching off the news and social media and not looking at your portfolio at all. It’s not good for your mental health or any sense of wellbeing.

Your financial plan is designed for the long-term – the rest of your life. It is not designed for the next year, but for every year. We believe, because of the wealth of evidence from history, that markets rise and fall very suddenly, often for poor or misguided reasons. However, they always recover, given enough time (which is key). I do not like seeing the valuation of funds drop any more than you do – I can assure you. In fact, I am pretty certain I’m far more fed up with it, as it is so needless.

“Sit tight” is very easy for me to say, but it’s very hard to do, I know that. However, we have been through similar events before, lots of them. It’s never comfortable and often feels like “this time it’s different”. It is certainly different having an idiot as a President, but there are lots of similarly foolish and vile men (and some women) running countries around the world. It’s part of our lives and something we each contend with. Yes; Trump is unpredictable (other than in his capacity to lie) but even so, there is a limit to his real power. You are invested in companies around the world, many of them trade with each other and are interconnected, something that Trump will never understand. No economy is an island of penguins.

Yes, this is concerning, anyone who has invested in the last month has taken a hit on value, but it will recover. You still own and hold the same ‘stuff’, it’s just that the perceived value is lower than it was at the start of January. Attempting to ‘time the market’ is only ever easy in hindsight and requires at least two decisions, to exit and to re-enter. Neither are easy and from experience most fail to get even close (and if they do, to be honest it’s nothing more than luck as they can never repeat their achievement).

Your portfolio is global, hugely diversified and very low cost. Values will rise again once we have got through this period of self-inflicted insanity. Sadly, I have nothing good to say about the current President of the United States, or his cabinet and supporters. To me they look, speak, sound and smell very much like a fascist dictatorship, certainly it shows all the signs and actions of one in its infancy. I can only hope that his premiership and his regime ends very suddenly before the allotted time. He has no sense of decency and no understanding of history. The sooner he is gone the better.

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Sit tightJemima Thomas2025-04-11T15:47:25+01:00

Sanctions, sanity and sanctuary

Dominic Thomas
April 2025 • 5 min read

Sanctions, sanity and sanctuary

You are old enough to know that the world is fairly mad. Nations are often run by fairly despicable people, sometimes elected into power, sometimes they simply take it. At some point in life (for some this might be their entire lifetime) an opinion is formed about ‘others’ who are used as the excuse for many ills and failures. The truth is a victim of agenda and despite the cold epitaphs of November Remembrance services, nothing is really learned other than to repackage misery.

We take it as a sad reflection of “man’s inhumanity to man” that some people don’t and won’t get on, invariably due to holding a different opinion about religion or politics or both. In a capitalist world, withholding money and trade (or making it harder for both) is a way of attempting to coerce a required behaviour. This may have worked in the 1980s with sanctions imposed against South Africa; whether it has worked elsewhere is debatable. Yet it remains a rather obvious tool.

Idealists (which I am prone to myself at times) may well argue that the power of withholding custom or money from some companies may help nudge them towards better behaviour. Trying is arguably better than doing nothing.

In the investment world, screening out companies (or even countries) is not without its challenges. One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. Perspective and narrative are up for grabs and twisted to suit.

The war in Palestine, which is horrendous, poses challenges. For some to criticise Israeli politics is to be antisemitic, which is, in my opinion, utterly daft. Anyone who has paid attention to history, knows the misery and horrors inflicted upon Jews for centuries, particularly in the last World War with the holocaust. It is more than understandable that Jewish people would wish to defend themselves. However, any reasonable person, would not consider the atrocities in Gaza anything remotely reasonable but rather more ironically fascistic.

When Government fails to address a problem, individuals are left to find ways that they might express their concern, and investors reduce or completely withdraw from particular sectors or countries. We are all investors; most people simply don’t know how things really work. If you have a final salary pension (lucky you!) then you may not be aware that money doesn’t simply appear, it is the consequence of investment in property, debt and shares in companies. You do not get to select the investment and given the size of the scheme and pressure on it to provide a guaranteed income for your lifetime and your spouse’s, there isn’t really that much invested into shares due to the need for predictable income and an inflation linked one at that.

Some protest groups have taken to highlighting “investment into Israel” or ammunitions and defence companies that supply Israel (amongst many others). They call for a ban on such holdings as an attempt to influence the behaviour of the companies and Governments concerned. I have sympathy with the sentiment, but as a member of such a scheme you don’t get to choose how and what the pension is invested in and it is enormous. The Local Government Pension for England and Wales for example stood at £354,047,000,000 (£354billion) at the end of 2023. This is a scheme where more is paid out (in pensions) than paid in (contributions by employed members). Roughly 51% of the LGPS is invested in shares. Interesting (for me) the investment costs for 22/23 were £1,726,500,000 which is about 0.4876% of the portfolio (so your portfolio – if arranged by us – gets lower investment costs than the massive pension schemes).

In 2022/23 there were 6.49million members of the LGPS, up from the previous year by 0.1million. Active members (people employed and contributing) amounted to 2.09m (32%); deferred members (former employees not yet taking their pension) 2.39m (37%) and 2.0m people (31%) drawing a pension. To say getting this balance right is difficult would be an understatement.

So, to exclusion … well one article I saw claimed that “81 local government pension funds have known complicit investments” and that £12,214,286,216 was the sum involved. Don’t forget that the value will fluctuate wildly each day (they are shares). These include Amazon and Google, I’m going to guess that you use these services so would be deemed complicit too. If I may infer that roughly half of the LGPS is invested in shares (£180bn or so) then the focus (£12.2bn) is on about 6% of the shares held (by value) – or 3% of the total value of the LGPS.

I’m not going to pretend that this is an easy problem and telling the Board of LGPS to divest itself of £12bn into other shares is either a wise, good or bad thing. Will it make any difference? Is 3% of something an issue that normally causes you distress and guilt? How much of your tax is spent on things you don’t agree with or approve of? Do you write to your MP about it?

£12bn is a lot of money, it should be enough to make most of us stop and think, but when presented as 3% – does that alter your perspective?

Sadly, the world is a chaotic, messy and often nasty place. My privileges of living here in the UK (amongst many others) are not lost on me. I don’t have the answers for the crisis, which is both decades and centuries long. Flexing an economic muscle has its appeal, but quite how much this particular issue is of significance I am afraid that I’m unable to say.

Members of final salary (Defined Benefit) pensions are not able to select funds, but of course are able to lobby the Board about their concerns. For those of you with an investment-based pension, we can discuss screening policy at any time.

If you are seeking a personal opinion, then I would say that lobbying is a good approach to the problem, but it isn’t an easy or straightforward process. Arguably, UK Government (or broader) sanctions might have more of an impact. Demonstrated by the fact that Mr Musk’s remarks and gestures have not gone unnoticed and have resulted in a dramatic change in Tesla’s valuation.

References:

https://lgpsdivest.org/
https://lgpsboard.org/index.php/membership23

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Sanctions, sanity and sanctuaryJemima Thomas2025-04-08T11:14:04+01:00

Market turbulence

Dominic Thomas
March 2025 • 3 min read

Market turbulence

If you have followed the news, you will appreciate that global stock markets have been falling sharply over recent weeks. This is in response to the wave of changes and abandonment of normal policy by the new, rather insane US Government.

Your portfolio will have fallen. It will recover, the question is really how much worse will things get and how long before they recover. To which the answer is, “I don’t know” and nobody knows.

I would remind you that we have seen significant falls in market values every year (on average -15% every year at some point), it’s simply that some years you and the media pay more attention.

You can view your portfolio in our secure portal or on the platform portal that we are using for you, typically Fundment, Nucleus, Parmenion or Transact. However I would caution against doing so regularly as this will merely increase your anxiety, which isn’t good for your health or your financial plan.

Many of us realised that Trump was not someone to be trusted, based on his actions over many years, but despite his very odd decades-long special relationship with Putin, it seems that there are still swathes of Americans who are unable to discern this (even if it smacked them around the face with a kipper). Denial and distortion of facts and reality are in evident supply, unlike truth and justice.

In terms of helpful and reassuring information and our approach to evidence-based investing, JP Morgan produce data about the worst declines in valuation during each calendar year. Admittedly, this is the FTSE All-Share not the global market, but the principles are exactly the same. It’s a chart that you would have seen before in our client magazine Spotlight.

The chart shows the grey bars as the final return for the calendar year since 1986. It shows that of the 39 completed years, 27 (70%) were positive, 12 (30%) were negative. That means that roughly one year in four is negative. The red dots indicate the worst or deepest decline in each of those years. Every year has a ‘crash’. The average drop is 15% and the median (the middle value when all lined up in order) drop is 12%.

This knowledge hopefully provides some comfort about the reality of ‘drops’ each year, but the message is really – don’t panic, stay in your seat. Admittedly you could say “sell it, get me out” but this will actually realise a loss (make it real rather than notional) and it is unlikely that you will re-invest at a point that is any more favourable, if you do that’s probably luck rather than skill.

We have built your financial plan making allowance for these scenarios. Investments do not grow in straight neat lines; they are erratic. The greater the proportion you hold in equities (shares), the more volatile, but also the greater the reward over time. Your plan is designed for your entire lifetime and beyond.

As of now (March 17^th 2025), the global equity market is down -3.75% since the start of 2025. Global Bonds are up +0.85% and a 50/50 portfolio is down -1.73%. The numbers in pounds will look considerably worse than this, they always do because you relate to pounds in terms of your income and spending rather than your capital, but it is healthier to consider it in percentage terms. The chart below shows the Year to Date (YTD) figures for Timeline Tracker 100 (green) 50 (yellow) 0 (red).

Looking at a longer term perspective helps provide some context.

None of us like to see portfolios hit heavily, it is unnerving. As I have said, this is currently down to the politics of the US Government, with proposed tariffs and appointing billionaires to act as parodies of Bond villains providing ‘advice’ to the White House. Personally, I hope that he is removed from office as soon as possible, but it is also clear that the Vice President is perhaps even worse, possessing very little understanding of how the world works.

Generally in life we tend to assume that wisdom is correlated with age. At the age of 78 I find no evidence that Trump possesses any. Mr Vance at age 40 certainly hasn’t acquired any yet.

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Market turbulenceJemima Thomas2025-03-20T16:51:04+00:00

The State of This

Dominic Thomas
Nov 2024 • 1 min read

The State of This

When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a King. The palace becomes a circus.

Today I must once again face the struggle to recognise that I cannot control very much at all. I cannot control how people vote either here or in another country. I have to come to terms with the sadness, anger and disappointment that for reasons I simply fail to understand, Americans have voted for someone who wouldn’t be fit to work in any organisation I have ever been involved with. In my sector, the regulator would not permit a position of authority to such a person and hopefully not even a license to practice. Think about that for a moment.

I can control my responses, which is far easier to say (and write) than it is in practice. I can acknowledge my feelings of rage and the decisions taken, for which I have a variety of colourful terms, but I will not give way to my ire here.

Despite being a sad moment (and from my perspective a very dangerous one) for most of the planet, I remain committed to positive change. To doing the little that I can to improve life for those in my orbit and where possible those outside of it.

We will be here, at the ‘coalface’ of the struggle between your values and value, between enough and too much, between lack and excess, between conflicting feelings and realities. The nuance of life in all its glory, the choices that each of us make on a daily basis as we step forward into an unknown future, which has today become a little more precarious than it was yesterday.

We only have time, the important things are those that unite and bind us as humans, which are surprisingly simple and often forgotten.

Hope not hate.

Life is brief, his tenure will end.

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The State of ThisJemima Thomas2024-11-06T13:47:33+00:00

HAVE YOUR BOG OFF FUND

TODAY’S BLOG

HAVE YOUR BOG OFF FUND

One of the things that continues to surprise me is when a new potential client answers questions about retirement. Most, when asked, regularly tell me that they want to retire at 65 or whatever their State Pension Age is. It’s odd, because such a date is rather random and set by Government. My view is that your retirement should always be when you want to stop going to work for money.

Of course, not everyone enjoys their work, for a great number, work is merely a way to pay bills and support their lifestyle. Having a fund of money so that you can leave a job or perhaps a partner is a sensible strategy. Money provides choice and sometimes that choice is to escape from a bad situation.

Bombshell

This week, a court found Harvey Weinstein guilty (anyone actually surprised?)… It will also be of no surprise to anyone that follows my social media, that I am no fan of Donald Trump or Fox News. Both are bereft of any integrity. A cursory glance at Fox news will serve no purpose other than to confirm that there is a worrying lack of intelligent news or comment from the paranoid at Fox.

So, it was some degree of interest that I watched the movie Bombshell. This is a true story about the abuse of power and in particular the sexual harassment of many of the women that work at Fox News. Many of the women felt that they were in a trap – unable to whistle blow if they wish to retain a career shaped by the very few. I wonder if some may have been spared had they consulted a good financial planner to help plan and establish a suitable fund.

Fox “News”

The story begins with Megyn (ah America) Kelly one of the main anchors for Fox. She dared to question Donald Trump’s views about women and was met with his typical petulance that only such an infantile buffoon can get away with. His misogyny is amplified by his equally demented followers and a constant sexist diatribe. We also see how Gretchen Carlson is harassed and effectively forced out of her job due to her unwillingness to comply with varying demands from the then CEO Roger Ailes. I won’t spoil the factual story, other than to say Fox, Trump and Giuliani all come out much as you would expect. Yet this and many other forms of harassment continue all over the world.

Financial Empowerment

It’s a classic, money, sex and power thing… but it’s really disappointing that rather than this being the exception, under the likes of Trump and his hypocritical cronies, the majority either don’t or won’t care. Social media is no place to take the temperature of humanity, there are lots of awful things said by lots of awful people. Yet any attempt to convey ideas about justice are invariably met with perhaps the most stupid comments, predominantly from men. Financial abuse may be a new term, but its certainly an old form of abuse. Any understanding of history will quickly reveal how badly women have been treated by men where finance and financial independence are concerned.

We all need financial independence and the ability to walk (or run) from toxic relationships without losing everything in the process. Hardly a bombshell – to me that’s just fair and common sense. Have your own “bog off” fund.

Here’s the trailer for the movie Bombshell – a much better movie than I expected. 7/10

BOMBSHELL THE MOVIE

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

You can read more articles about Pensions, Wealth Management, Retirement, Investments, Financial Planning and Estate Planning on my blog which gets updated every week. If you would like to talk to me about your personal wealth planning and how we can make you stay wealthier for longer then please get in touch by calling 08000 736 273 or email info@solomonsifa.co.uk

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Solomon’s Independent Financial Advisers
The Old Mill Cobham Park Road, COBHAM Surrey, KT11 3NE

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HAVE YOUR BOG OFF FUNDDominic2025-01-28T10:08:04+00:00

The Trouble With…

Solomons-financial-advisor-wimbledon-blogger

The Trouble With…

It seems impossible not to feel a sense of despair sometimes when you see, read or hear the news. When there are atrocities on our own streets or we see yet further mindless violence in countries with whom we have deep and long connections, the sense of despair is palpable. However bad or inept the reporting, I remain thankful that I live here in the UK.

I’m not alone in thinking that the man currently elected as President of the United States is simply not fit for the task. He is out of his depth and displays his evident lack on a daily basis. We have come, (well…I have) to expect very little from him.

Viva Espana?

Spain on the other hand, is a country that most of us know almost as well and the US. Our language barrier is possibly helpful as we tend not to make too many assumptions about each other. Yet I am struggling to understand what goes through the mind of a policeman in the Spanish Civil Guard who appears to enjoy stamping, beating and fighting anyone he deems to be “opposition”. The images that have crossed a multitude of screens are truly horrifying. Whilst the vote for independence may be “illegal” it is clear that a very significant proportion of those living in Catalonia do not wish to remain part of Spain.

Splitting Heirs

As an Englishman and a British citizen, I’m aware of the calls for devolution of power and potential independence of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and perhaps Cornwall. This is unsettling to my sense of what is “normal” but of course the history of our own union is relatively recent and things were different before, much as they were in Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Prussia and so on… borders change. We do not keep the peace by pretending that all is well. We do so by listening to the perspective of the other. As in a marriage that reaches the point of irreconcilable differences, we need to acknowledge that sadly (perhaps) the best course of action is to separate and ultimately to agree to the new legal state of all parties concerned. This will have some genuine difficulties, just like a divorce, the division of resources and accounting for what belongs to who is painful. Those of you that have been through a divorce will understand this more pertinently than those that have not.

Head of State or State of Mind?

The suggestion that “the law” is to be upheld as though it is never altered based upon real experience is nonsense. The law is formed from experience and always evolves to reflect the changing nature of society. When a Monarch, President or Prime Minister fails to grasp the sense of unfairness felt by “their own people” preferring to support aggressive legitimised bullies, it seems to me only right to call them to account.

Ceteris Paribus

What has this to do with financial planning? We make assumptions about the future all the time. The biggest ones are those we don’t even verbalise – such as a relationship lasting. At my annual Institute’s Conference, last week, I expressed this view and to be honest, it didn’t seem to “land” with the small group that I was with. We talk of risk – typically investment risk, but also political and economic risk, occasionally the risk of health or redundancy, but rarely the risk of relationships ending. It is the elephant in the room with all couples, do we talk about the risk of irreconcilable differences?

I’m reminded of the saying “the pessimist complains about the wind, the optimist expects it to change, the realist adjusts the sails“.

Feedback welcome, but not for a debate on the issues of Scottish Independence or devolution, or even what’s going on “abroad”. We can only control a very small number of things, but our ability to face up to our assumptions is one of them. For the record, I “love” Britain, Spain, the US but I prefer human dignity over any flag.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

Email me to get in touch

The Trouble With…Dominic2025-02-03T10:37:23+00:00

Beatriz at Dinner

It’s the London Sundance Film Festival, Salma Hayek is in town with her new movie “Beatriz at Dinner”. The story revolves around Beatriz, a massage “healer” who works at a cancer centre in Santa Monica. Apparently she also does the ocassional home visit. One such client is Cathy, the wife of a very wealthy businessman Grant. Upon completing her massage, Beatriz cannot start her car, is unable to leave the lavish gated community and is invited to stay for dinner, which is a small “work-do” with Cathy and Grant.

The scene is set for polar opposites to break bread together. The guests are all fantastically wealthy and are celebrating another successful development project which will likely have an environmental impact, but make them lots of money. The king pin is Doug Strutt, something of a small parody of the current thug that is president of the US. A man who bullies his way to wealth and clearly sees amassing more and more as a “game”.

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Bubbles that burst?

Naturally, Beatriz is an animal lover, who also happens to be a deeply traumatized individual who is unloved. The scene is set for a frank exchange of views and an expose on the gulf between the have’s and the have not’s, or the bubble of the one percent. However, this is a Hollywood movie, so the subject matter which may have tickled those involved with its prospects, fails to deliver anything of substance other than well-worn caricatures. I might suggest that whilst the idea seemed interesting at the time, perhaps it fails because the story is a gnats wing from life in Beverly Hills.

In the Q&A session, Salma Hayek didn’t help matters either with her ramblings about purity and frankly failing to grasp the pain of character she plays. Perhaps because she is the daughter of hugely wealthy Mexicans and has married a French billionaire, that she has far more in common with Cathy and Grant than she may care to see.

Eyes to See

In reality, it is Grant and Cathy that are more representative of the liberal elite. It is they that are confused about friendship and relationship. Whilst having all of life’s finery, they fail to see their own hypocrisy and ignore the damage done to accumulate. Of course there is a degree to which most of us are like this. It is easier to ignore the exploitation of which we are both benefactors and victims. Indeed the neurosis of buying fairly traded anything is one of many grey lines that we navigate on a daily or weekly basis and with our largely comfortable lives we can afford not to be affronted. Whether that’s the fruit and veg or the “made in somewhere without” of our garments.

Finding Your Number

From time to time, I do wonder if this is what people think a financial planner does – make you rich. Whilst I am obviously not anti-money (I hope that is rather obvious) there is a point, which is called “enough”. Most do not know where this is – as it is undoubtedly a very individual answer. All good financial planners help reveal your “number” what you need to do all that you have affirmed to be your wishes and intentions. Yes with plenty of assumptions, slack for margin of error and disasters. This is a world of difference from Doug Strutt, who by failing to identify what he values, he constantly seeks unfulfilling highs which take him further and further away from a connected life. He takes life as way of finding it. His walls become higher and higher in every sense.

Choices

Money has the power to liberate and bring choice, how it is made brings many challenges in our global economy. However we possess choices too – whether to carefully consider at what we want from life or to simply get caught up being the next king of the hill. The uncomfortable truth is that our choices impact others. Yes we all need money but from that assertion springs a lot of questions.

Here’s the trailer.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

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Beatriz at DinnerDominic2025-01-28T13:29:09+00:00

Awards Season

Award Season

It is the awards season, in many aspects of life there are now annual awards. I recognize that this isn’t everyone’s “cup of tea”, many are highly subjective and some…well frankly they are bought marketing manipulations. Some argue that successful people have already had their rewards by virtue of a swollen bank balance. I have some sympathy with those points of view.

There are of course good and “bad” awards, sometimes you may have a preference about who wins, sometimes… not so much. It wont surprise you that I enjoy awards for music, art, film and theatre which are arguably daft as they are completely subjective… so perhaps I’m a little daft too

Presidential Medal of Freedom

One award ceremony that I saw recently was the 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom. Critics of awards tend to dismiss them as unnecessary fluff for people that are already thanked and seem to miss the point of the hard work, often selfless struggles that expose the true nature and values of the individual concerned and their impact on others.

Inspired to greatness

Watching reactions, hearing snippets of their stories is both moving and inspirational. They affirm what we hope to be and inspire us to greater things… (I can’t believe its just me that feels that way). To my mind one of the great attributes of President Obama was (is) his integrity and his ability to relate to ordinary people in a quite extraordinary manner. All of us probably want recognition for our efforts, few of us are likely to receive this in any form other than our wages, except perhaps from our small group of friends and family.

The contrast could not be greater

Watching the clip of the event I was encouraged and inspired, informed and moved. A humorous, personal speech from Obama along with a clear affection for those that were being recognized. This is the America that most of us wish to see, that is the world leader of inspiration and reflects the source of the special connection that in reality most nations probably feel to some extent. Whilst I recognize it is full of contradictions, (as am I) this is the version of America that today feels rather different and lost under the new President. In time we shall see what sort of President Mr Trump makes, but an inability to understand, empathize or appreciate the difference between facts and lies does not bode well.

I suspect that you don’t spend hours watching reality TV shows, but if you do have about an hour this video is worth seeing, even if you have it on in the background as you work. For more about the 2016 recipients click here.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

Awards SeasonDominic2023-12-01T12:18:53+00:00

You’ve Been Trumped

When I ask most people when they wish to retire, they tend to say “65” some say earlier than that, but certainly most say 65. So whatever one thinks of the recent election in the United States, it is worth remembering that clearly the a new top job posed no obvious concerns for either Hilary Clinton (69) and Donald Trump (70) the latter will now replace Ronald Reagan as the oldest US President elected (who was 69 in 1981 at the time). Mr Obama, for the record turned 55 in August and so would only just have qualified for the new pension freedoms here in the UK.

The unease about Mr Trump is largely due to the rather reckless and aggressive things he said as a candidate. Naturally many of these have been taken at face value and it is hard to see how he would make a worthy world leader given his apparent lack of self-control and overly inflated ego. Indeed his understanding of “hate” and “harassment” must surely be out of whack. His own words before and since the election delivered in a tone precisely the opposite to that of the actors at a New York theatre, who respectfully offered their legitimate concerns to Mr Pence, yet he took this as an affront and has repeatedly demanded an apology, something that he has not offered himself to anyone for any of his rants. However, sadly, he will be the 45th President, assuming the 70-year-old can live with the stress and legal challenges until January. He is arguably one of the least suitable people to be President, but of course history reveals a lengthy list of similar psychopathic leaders.

The Great Con Trick

Mr Trump has estimated wealth of over $3bn yet seems to have persuaded the majority of key voters that he is anti-establishment. Yet this is a man who has only once elected finally settled a fraud case about his “University” – essentially proving that justice in America is for those with cash and who can make problems disappear. If ever there was an example of the 1% “elite” getting their way and deluding the masses, this must surely be it. Perhaps the Hamilton thing was simply his way of trying to distract people from yet another example of his utter hypocrisy.

Swallowing Camels

Talking of delusional, many of his voters were conservative evangelical Christians (some not all), who by any measure must fall foul of straining a gnat to swallow a camel, turning considerably more cheek and “blind eye”, perhaps due to some sense that he represents “family values” (ironic given his background) but by which is meant… there’s one way to do this thing called life.

A Deep Sense of Inadequacy

His credentials in business are somewhat questionable, having made a fortune and lost one, with six of his businesses declared bankrupt (Chapter 11) between 1991 and 2009, all of which came about from over-borrowing. He invariably claims that business isn’t personal, though excels at telling anyone how personally talented he is. In essence Mr Trump already had a fortune and then borrowed money as a landlord to make a larger one. His high-rise Trump Tower buildings presumably provide any psychotherapist with ample material.

Pandora’s Box?

Naturally, I do not know Mr Trump personally, so I am not in a strong position to assess the information we have about him any differently from anyone else. He does not appear to be a man able to remain calm in a crisis, indeed he merely stirs and promotes phobias of those who seem to need little prompting, perhaps due to ignorance or genuinely miserable lives that need to blame anyone and anything that’s different… and I am, like others, concerned that his election “normalizes” extreme views of a very unpleasant nature.

It’s possible that he might be a decisive President and able to get things through both Congress and the Senate, now that they are “rigged” in his favour, much as they have clearly been working against the interests of Mr Obama. His stated aims are alarming, he has surrounded himself with people who appear to also struggle with inflated egos and at this stage it is hard to see who will provide the wise counsel that he will certainly need.

Of course, quite why people voted as they did, for something different or just someone they thought was tough on TV I shall leave to the pundits to decipher. We will calmly review investments in light of information as it materializes.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

You’ve Been TrumpedDominic2023-12-01T12:18:59+00:00

Black Mirror – Nosedive

The new series of Black Mirror has been released (21 October 2016) on Netflix and is a bit of a cross between Tales of the Unexpected and The Twilight Zone…. Remember them? If you do, then there is a fair chance that you will have had more than your fair share of adopting new technology over the years and Black Mirror is a small leap of the imagination into a future that is almost within our reach.

Nosedive, the first episode of the new series from the writer Charlie Brooker provides plenty of food for thought for those of us that use social media. Irrespective of who you are, there is something very satisfying about having a post or tweet “liked” or “retweeted” – a sense that you are being heard. Of course for small and large business, your social media marketing strategy is all about trying to engage people, both prospective clients and existing ones. This blog is no different.

Brooker draws out attention to the insatiable underlying desire for approval that underpins this and reflects a future society (not very much in the future) where “service with a smile” and the constant demand for ratings and feedback result in desperate collective anxiety and need to fake it in order to gain approval. Not only approval, but the point-scoring system acts as the new form of societal sorting and classification of us all.

image of Lacie, the lead character practicing her smile, current score 4.243

Are you getting feedback?

I thoroughly enjoyed his take on this rather dystopian future, of a world addicted to handsets and a numbing or removing of real experiences and interactions. I’m sure that if you shop online, you now get a request for some feedback. As with many things this was intended to be for our good – a chance to engage and improve services, yet it has become so widespread it now simply feels needy, like some spoiled child constantly asking for approval.

Here at Solomons are guilty of this too. We ask for feedback and comments – and for you to share posts, tweets and so on. This is now all part of helping spread the word about the business and how we help clients, how we bring value. That said, it can become very irritating (hence we try to limit our “neediness”).

Rage against the machine

I guess this reflects the changing nature of relationships between us all and the organisations that we use. Seeing people rant online, whether about Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton, Southern Rail or Brexit is at least raw and exposing, of course great care needs to be taken, but in Nosedive, we are faced with a “sanitized” society where genuine emotion, thought or comment is parked firmly out of sight, to the point where who you are seen to be and with are more important than who you are.

At least here in 2016 we continue to help our clients verbalise and express their true values, not simply those that are deemed “acceptable”. Its funny how often I ask people when they plan to retire and they invariably say 65 – which used to be the default State pension age, as though this is an appropriate “date”. The truth is that you can “retire” whenever you want – or not at all and why here at Solomons we prefer to use the term financial freedom day – when you choose to work, not because you have to, but because you want to.

Here’s a bit about Nosedive.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

Black Mirror – NosediveDominic2025-01-28T13:29:13+00:00

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