John's money ideas

A rather pleasant month of March in that everything in the portfolio was up. A small increase of a little over 0.2% from GQG Emerging Markets through to a nice climb of just over 6% by the Man Japan CoreAlpha Fund. Overall there was a portfolio gain of 3.4%, this puts it mid way between the FT All World Index, up around 2.8%, and the FTSE 100, up just over 4.2%.
No trades over the last month and nothing planned for the immediate future, very much a case of ‘steady as she goes’.

The FTSE 100 is in interesting territory, currently at little over 7900. This high 7000s seems a bit of a barrier for it. First got to this zone back in early 2018 where it hit this region twice, but then fell back a bit. Up again in early 2020, but then COVID arrived and everything came crashing down. Recovery and a return to the high 7000s in the spring of 2022 followed by a momentarily breaking through 8000 in Feb 2023. Then spending the next 14 months bouncing between say 7250 and 7750. However a jump up towards the end of this March brings it back to a whisker below 8000 again.
If it could break through this 8000 mark, perhaps when the Bank of England gets round to cutting interest rates, then maybe we could see a positive break away from this rather indifferent trend.
Covering the same time period (since early 2018) the FT All World Index is up nearly 50%, while the American S&P 500 has almost doubled. It would be nice to see a bit of ‘catch-up’ from the U.K. index.
Glad my portfolio has a bit of diversification across it so it could take advantage of what’s happening around the rest of the world.