Some of you may have seen the film Shakespeare in love, I would like to take a part of the dialogue as my staring point this week.

Phillip Henslowe: “Mr Fenyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster”

Hugh Fenntman: “So what do we do?”

Philip Henslowe: “Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well”

Fennyman: “How?”

Henslowe: “I don’t know it’s a mystery”

Some of my long term readers may recall I used the last sentence some time ago when discussing our friends in mainland Europe. I am using it this week to talk more generally about investing in the Stock Market. I would like to take as my lesson the S&P 500. The index hit a record high rose to an all – time high this week even though there was plenty of data such as the rise in folks signing on for unemployment benefit. The answer is probably that the rise in the stocks of just five members of the index, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Alphabet (Google) rose by 37% while the other 495 stocks fell by a combined 6%. This is of course the week in which Apples value passed $2trillion.

The point of the lesson is that although Covid19 is still causing havoc in all areas of our lives as far as investments are concerned the great Fund Managers that we follow are working hard to find the growth stocks to include in their funds which in turn will bring growth to our portfolios and in turn your investments.

So, without wishing to contradict Henslowe, it’s not a mystery it’s all about well-balanced portfolios

So to the markets –