I want to start by talking a little about forgone times and why in these very peculiar times they sometimes mean so much to us. TWP Wealth started life in 2006 being formally The Wilmslow Partnership. When we were based at our previous office, every Tuesday the fish van arrived from the coast and sold its daily catch in the square where we were based. Many of the staff would buy their fresh fish and keep it in the fridge in the office kitchen. At home time every Tuesday, there were repeated shouts of ‘Don’t forget the fish’ and so this became a bit of a catchphrase and followed us to our new home in Alderley Edge.
Don’t forget the fish is a reminder of our origins, and for many years we used this as the title of our monthly newsletter as a bit of fun and to show that in a traditionally boring sector such as ours we could have a bit of humour and we were a little different to the norm’. We’d like to restart this tradition and use it as a way of updating you all, our clients and partners as to what has been happening at TWP each month.
Without stating the obvious this last 2 months or so have been the strangest yet weirdly and fascinatingly liberating time for me. The acronym WFH used to be questioned as to its meaning; now it’s our norm’. I am delighted to say that we’ve all adapted well and have set ourselves up in spare bedrooms, dining rooms and kitchen tables, meeting all the slings and arrows of outrageous printer connections and mastering Zoom video conferencing. We have a daily Zoom (now a verb and a noun) with one central theme – to keep us all connected. I think we’ve all felt the strain in one form or another as we are all creatures of habit to some extent. Lately, we’ve even thrown in a weekly quiz to keep us all ‘together’. It’s surprising how much Martin’s classical education comes to the fore when trying to think what 362 is in roman numerals! Sourdough baking efforts and the growing lengths of our hair have been interesting diversions but by enlarge we’ve kept our business going and have adapted to the change very well. We never did entertain any furloughing, a fact we’re proud of. It is very much business as usual at TWP.
Closer to your thoughts might be that of falling markets. The bare facts are that the FTSE stood at 7500 points in mid-February and by mid-March was some 33% down on that ‘high’. This represents one of the steepest falls in stock market history. The 9% fall on March 12th 2020 represented the 2nd worst one day fall in stock market history – the biggest being 1987’s black Monday fall. I am not belittling the severity of these falls nor am I predicting any ‘U’ or ‘W’ shaped recovery that we might see; conjecture is not TWP’s business and will never be. However, in all the conversations we have with you we always advocate time in, not timing the markets and this situation is no different. We believe wholeheartedly in a three-pot strategy to cover your short, medium and long term cash flow needs and would never advocate anybody second-guessing the markets. Whilst history doesn’t repeat itself it does teach us lessons, and whilst there will be ups and downs in markets along the way, history demonstrates that being invested for the long term is rewarding.
The chart below shows 35 years of these ups and downs and in so doing speaks a thousands words.
This chart (courtesy of https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/stock-market) shows the FTSE 100 over the last 35 years with the latest position as @ 28th May 2020 being 6184 points.
We would encourage you all to reach out to us should you have any query whatsoever about these testing times. All our contact details are on our website at TWPWealth.com
Failing that our mainline telephone line is 01625 528500 and is manned every weekday (barring Thursday) by the magnificent Pavlina who can help or direct your call to the person who can better help. We’d love to hear from you if you have questions.
Overall I hope you are all safe and well and continue to garner strength as we come out of this phase one.
Please go safe all of you.
Mark Shotton
Managing Director