Today’s Spring Equinox (that they know it occurred at 2:46pm in London, blows my mind!) might well feel like it’s the only thing on an even keel at the moment, unless the Bank of England’s decision to hold interest rates also qualifies.

Unsurprisingly, all the focus is on the Middle East conflict [Ed – chose your own word for it!] and resurrecting the ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ slogan. But it is as sound a saying as the 1939 original, and hopefully helps to keep things in perspective as the following from RBC Brewin Dolphin shows:     

With the conflict across the Middle East now at the three-week stage, we thought it would be interesting to share a piece which our research analysts have put together. 

The article summarises some of the key themes which we are keeping a close eye on, including:

• Economic impacts of Iran conflict intensify: As the conflict enters an asymmetric phase, reduced tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz has seen oil prices cross the $100 threshold.
• Consumer energy prices set to rise: The knock-on effects of oil price rises are already being felt in the energy sector, with consumers set to see increases in the coming months.
• Interest rate cuts could go into reverse: Wider markets are starting to feel the impact of the conflict and interest rates which were expected to fall may well now rise.

We continue to actively manage portfolios in line with client’s long-term goals, and as ever, our focus remains on the kind of blue-chip companies that can demonstrate robust characteristics, and which have demonstrated over many years their resilience in challenging times.

While there is no immediate sign of a ceasefire, history does tell us that markets have a habit of eventually seeing beyond such conflicts and as a team we are still investing in a diversified manner across high-quality companies and funds that are better positioned to withstand the slightly elevated volatility levels present today.

Furthermore, hopefully we will see a ceasefire soon, which markets should welcome. If this does materialise in the near term, it is possible that we see positive bounce back, which is what happened last year after a disappointing first quarter of 2025 (as seen below). For this reason, we remain fully invested and will continue to monitor developments closely.

Whilst we don’t know what will happen yet, I think this chart on its own highlights that things are happening all the time in investment markets and 

In what I really hope is a short-lived series(!) Raymond James Charles Stanley (more on which later) has a latest update on the conflict, which I attach.

Market News

When confronted with big unknowns, it’s tempting to imagine the worst, as Rathbones’ latest Weekly Digest notes. But amid the fog of war, its investment process aims to manage the risks while not missing the boat if things suddenly take a turn for the better. 

The situation in Iran is already deep into the territory of ‘knowns’ and ‘unknowns’, as popularised by one-time US Secretary of Defense(!) Donald Rumsfeld. Still, there are plenty of facts that we can work with. As the war runs into its third week, financial markets are showing a commendable degree of equanimity, on the surface, in the face of alarming headlines. 

Last week’s divergence in performance between different regions and sectors was much less pronounced than in the first week of hostilities. A lot of the speculative and leveraged traders were flushed out pretty quickly. Last week the S&P 500 fell 1.6%, for example, while the 2.0% loss for the MSCI World ex-US was not a lot worse.

Even so, the US has benefitted from some relative advantages, not least its position as a net exporter of oil and gas. That’s been reflected in a decent rally for the dollar.

Even if you don’t read the Tatton Weekly this week have a look at the cartoon. Well, what can I say, it made me laugh. On the commentary front Lothar Mentel and team cover the following:

• Escalation precedes de-escalation – Markets initially just priced the short-term energy price impact, rather than full blown growth effects of this Gulf war. This week’s escalation challenged this stance.
• China projects stability – The leadership published their next 5-year plan with the lowest growth target in 25 years. 4.5% is still a formidable challenge but the economy looks in better shape now. And policy calmness helps promote the Renminbi as a global trading currency.
• Structural weakness in UK government debt – UK gilt yields have risen far more in response to the oil price shock than in comparable nations like France or Japan. Is it quirks in the UK bond market structure or less trust in UK government?

ISA Time 

Now, in the UK financial world, we know this time of year like we know our own birthdays. It’s the end of the tax year so if you don’t top up your ISAs by the end of the tax year you lose this year’s allowance. And just a reminder that the tax year end falls on Easter Sunday this year so we are realistically talking about making a payment this week!!

But is this known more widely? Not so much reports the Investment Association:

“Almost 1 in 5 Brits have never heard of a Stocks and Shares ISA … 25% of those who have don’t know anything about it”

Which isn’t ideal for anyone.

Over the past few years, Ben and Chris at 7IM have been doing their bit to get the (investment) gospel out there on LBC with Tom Swarbrick – in particular, with live call-ins from the public. The big aim is to harness the growing enthusiasm for investing and just redirect it slightly. They want to get people to fall in love with something far more important than stocks and shares:

A plan

So, they’re doing a little competition with Tom over the course of 2026, to make the point that the real game isn’t betting the house on influencer-hyped stocks, and that no one really knows what might go up or down over a period of months.

Here’s the deal:

• One FTSE 100 stock each
• Twelve months
• Best performer wins.

Who did they pick in January and why?

Tom: “a defence company, with a sideline in nuclear power. Perfect for an unstable international environment.”
Chris: “a UK high-street staple, lovely jumpers, Percy Pigs, sensible shoes. Consumer capitalism is alive and well.”
And for Ben … “a fantasy model making and role-playing game business”. [Insert your own nerd joke here, he’s heard them all].

How’s it playing out? Exactly as hoped; it’s all over the place.

Let’s just have a quick recap of some of the events of 2026 so far:

• A war in Iran …
• … leading to a supply chain crisis driving oil above $100 a barrel.
• … putting more pressure on UK households who are already struggling.

If we’d guaranteed you those facts at the start of the year, would you really have picked anything other than Rolls-Royce? Surely, a defence company which can also deliver energy independence, wrapped up in a British brand-name has to have trounced boring old Marks and Sparks?

Source: FactSet/7IM

Not so much. M&S slightly ahead, in fact. It comes down to framing vs. facts. Most of the time, we mentally classify things as simply as possible. X = Y, A = B, this company does that. We deliberately emphasised that above (sorry).

But reality is more complicated.

• Investors have grown used to thinking about Rolls-Royce as a defence company – the share price doubled last year on the back of that excitement. But almost 50% of Rolls-Royce’s revenue still comes from civil aerospace; that’s commercial jet engines and servicing them. Some of its biggest customers are Etihad, Emirates and Qatar Airways … ah. Not so good for business after all. So,Rolls-Royce is only up a little bit this year, compared to a pure defence company like BAE Systems, up 35%.
• Marks & Spencer is the inverse. It gets thought of as classic UK High Street, but about two‑thirds of its sales now come from food. And so far this year, people have been pinching the pennies on clothing but still splashing out on high quality produce for special occasions. So, unlike it’s pure high street rival Next (down 5% this year), M&S is managing to grow in areas Next isn’t even playing in.

You might call it surprise diversification … both companies have more going on than an easy labelling suggests.

Oh, and then there’s Ben’s pick. Games Workshop is definitely not diversified. You need lots of little Bens turning up every year. If they don’t, there’s no plan B. That doesn’t make it a bad business, but certainly riskier. He’s hoping for a rainy summer, with lots of time for inside board games.

The guys have assured us that this is all about the lesson, not the competition, although we have seen an increasing number of Percy Pigs around the office recently….

If you haven’t made your ISA investment this year and want to please speak to us soon.

Stand and Deliver

There is a contributor, who’s content I absolutely love. Dr Eliza Filby is a bestselling historian, author and the founder of AllRelative, a platform helping businesses understand how wealth, work and family life are being reshaped in the twenty-first century. Unfortunately, a lot of what I receive is too long to include [Ed – you’ll see why in a few moments] but I was really taken by her newsletter this week, so I’ve taken extracts from it and hope you agree 

A new report from Legal & General released this week tells a sobering story: around a third of Brits in work are not saving for a pension. Many expect their retirement income to be inadequate. The most vulnerable? Those in this demographic squeeze; in their early forties and fifties.

We were the Thatcher babies; the beneficiaries of greater freedoms, but also greater responsibility, especially when it came to our pensions, often without the education or nudge to make the right priorities or choices. When it came to money, I would say I entered adulthood financially illiterate. Financial planning meant making it through the month, rather than thinking through to retirement. I now look on in admiration at how many young people today approach their pensions, salary negotiations, and investments. I was not like that, nor were any of my friends.

We’re the generation, those in their early forties through to late fifties, who sit awkwardly between two systems. Too young to benefit from the golden age of defined benefit pensions. Too old to have auto-enrolment embedded into our early working lives. We are, in many ways, the transition generation, many of whom have had disrupted, ‘squiggly careers’. Some of us opted out. Some slipped through the gaps. Others have worked for employers who didn’t comply with pension rules.

We are also the credit card generation, the cohort that normalised overdrafts, payday loans, and long-term student debt. Some of us caught the tail end of cheap housing. Many did not. What distinguishes us is our exposure to unsecured borrowing. We are defined as much by what we owe as what we earn or own; store cards, personal loans, and car finance. Many of us simply didn’t prioritise pensions because everything else has felt more urgent in recent years: housing, rent, debt, children, not to mention crisis after crisis.

Pensions have an image problem. They aren’t sexy. They aren’t tangible in the way a house is. And in a cost-of-living crisis, when energy bills, food, and rent dominate, it is entirely rational that people prioritise the present. In midlife, when you may be caring for children and elderly parents, you are probably feeling squeezed from all sides.

I’m not writing this as a financial expert. Or to offer solutions. I’m writing this because I know how easy it is to drift into this position, and how long it can take to realise it. And because I know I’m not alone.

When I was at the Legal & General report launch last week, Paul Farmer, CEO of Age UK, made a point that has stayed with me. We talk endlessly about preventative health in our forties (exercise, diet, cutting back) because we know these years determine how we age. But we don’t think about money in the same way. We should.

Because your forties and fifties are not the end. They are actually the inflection point, the moment where there is still enough time for decisions to matter. I think Einstein is often credited with saying that compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world: those who understand it, earn it; those who don’t, pay it. I didn’t understand it at 28. Many of our generation didn’t. And yet, you don’t need to have understood it then to benefit from it now.

That window has not closed. If anything, your forties are the decade where it becomes most powerful, because it’s where time and money still have enough runway to work together. And yet, perversely, this is also the decade where many disengage, convinced it is too late. But that instinct is wrong.

My own pension awakening didn’t come from a financial adviser. Or a spreadsheet. Or even a particularly alarming bank statement. Not even from YouTube.

It came from a children’s book. I’m not kidding. When my son was a babe in arms, I used to read him The Ant and the Grasshopper. If you don’t know it, it’s a classic fable. A smug ant works hard all summer and stores food for winter, while the grasshopper spends the summer relaxing and enjoying life, putting nothing away. When winter comes, the ant is secure and comfortable. The grasshopper has nothing: cold, starving, and struggling to survive, until the ant eventually takes him in

I’m not writing this as advice, or as someone who got it right. Quite the opposite. I’m writing this as someone who assumed there would always be more time and then realised there wouldn’t be. But also, as someone who now understands this: it’s not too late to start being the ant. You just have to start.

As readers of the bulletin, you will have started already, but if you have family or friends who haven’t, please refer them to your usual JB Wealth advisor.   

Miscellaneous

Many of you have structured products in your discretionary portfolios so I thought the following note from Rathbones with an example of their benefits might be interesting:

We purchased this investment in the secondary market on 8 April at around £92, taking advantage of very attractive pricing at that point following Trump’s Liberation Day. The structure matured yesterday at £111, generating a gain of roughly 20% over just 11 months — well ahead of what traditional equity or bond exposure would typically have achieved over the same period. One of the indices it was based on, the Eurostoxx 50, was only up 2% from the strike date over the 11 months. This is a great example of how structured products, when selected carefully and monitored actively, can sit alongside core holdings and genuinely enhance client outcomes.

Mortgage rates have been slowly rising this week, as the Iran war entered its third week. This week, the Bank of England held the bank rate at 3.75 per cent citing global volatility, a decision which was expected. Since the start of March up until today, Moneyfacts’ average two-year fix residential mortgage rate has risen from 4.83 per cent to 5.35 per cent. The average rate across mortgage rates ended the week at 5.32 per cent, up from 5.07 per cent at the end of last week (March 12), showed Moneyfacts data. 

The House of Lords has struck down the government’s controversial proposal to direct where pension schemes invest, handing Rachel Reeves’ Treasury a significant defeat. The government had sought to give itself a controversial “reserve power” in the Pension Schemes Bill, which would allow it to direct where pension schemes invest, in a bid to boost U.K. and private assets. That provision was met with fury by the pensions industry, and Thursday’s amendment shows enough peers feel the same way.  

And if you have made it this far, there is a bonus paper from Evelyn Partners explaining about three changes happening to tax from 6^th April 2026.

Finally this week. Having washed my white car, if any of the bulletin readers are from Kent County Council and are wondering why there are so many potholes in the roads, I’ve a feeling that most of the tar must be splattered on my paintwork. Please feel free to collect it! 

I hope to catch up with you next time.