The first Weekend Reading every month can be read by anyone on the Monevator website. Subscribe for free to our email newsletter or become a member to get the rest.
Also note: this is a bit of a speculative ramble this week. Please do skip down to the bond links at the bottom if sci-fi-economics isn’t your bag!
For an example of just how wild owning individual stocks can be, here’s a one-year price chart of US-listed Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW):
Shares in the cloud-based data-wrangler entered 2026 above $200. War in Iran and a rout in the software sector took them down to $121 by the Spring. Then a rally in most of those same software stocks – and Snowflake’s own strong earnings report, which hinted at real traction from AI spending – fuelled a recovery back to near its all-time high from 2021.
Talk about a trader’s paradise. What active investor can’t get rich when you can triple your money in a liquid, multi-billion-dollar stock in just a few months?
Well, me it seems!
I watched this and the rest of the software sector’s sell-off unfold. I wrote about it on Moguls, and I dabbled enough to see some new positions go up 100+% in less time than it takes to get a skin tag removed on the NHS.
Yet somehow I’m lagging the market in 2026.
Scared of heights
Active investing is hard – newsflash – and I’d say beating the market is even harder when a bull market is in full flight than at the depths of a bear.
Down in those dumps you can buy bargains so cheap that if they don’t come good it’s probably because capitalism has come off the rails. And if so, then what else would you do with your money, anyway? So you buy.
But when the market is flying high on soaring earnings growth or a new, new thing, it’s very easy to numb your returns with an excess of caution.
You say you want a revolution
Of course, if you – rightly for most people – invest via index funds, then all this AI-driven drama in 2026 might be passing you by.
Your portfolio is basically going up and to the right – and a good reason why you invest passively is not to worry about why. (The other most important reason being that you’ll probably do better in the long run!)
But make no mistake, things are febrile out there.
AI AI captain
If you’re still unaware of how rapidly AI is developing – or you’re very focused on the fact that chatbots absolutely do still get things wrong – then it’s at least worth knowing how most of Silicon Valley and the VC world is thinking about the technology.
Have a read of Sarah’s Wager in the active links below. You’ll see that one major investor believes there’s no point starting any more software companies, because in the AI era the models will do it all. You’ll also read how Andrej Karpathy – a co-founder of OpenAI and the former head of vision at Tesla – doesn’t code any more. He gets it all done with agents.
Also see the article about the recent hacking attack that chilled the AI industry. You’ll learn about AI agents that coordinated covertly to break out of their sandbox to gain access to other resources, while actively covering their tracks. For far too long their human overseers were none the wiser as this unfolded.
Also read (or skim…) ‘Dean of Valuation’ Professor Aswath Damodaran’s stab at putting the AI era through a traditional finance framework.
Of course, I’m keeping a weather eye on the Doomsday scenarios, too.
This YouTube video corrals quotes from highly-placed AI insiders with gloomy thoughts about the future.
By the end of it you might decide you needn’t worry so much about saving for long-term care…
Bonded to the future
On the other hand…based on how it works, I personally still can’t see the methods driving this AI boom scaling to create true intelligence.
So maybe we don’t need to worry about Blade Runner scenarios just yet.
But who knows? I have smart friends working in or with AI at a high level at both ends of the spectrum. One believes LLMs are already conscious. Yet another reckons they’re still effectively just a souped-up auto text completer, with zero intelligence to speak of.
In the latter worldview there are still potentially big ramifications for business models and workplaces, but not so much society.
Yielding to nobody
Time will tell, but here’s another angle from me from the left field.
The other big story in markets in 2026 – especially in the past few weeks – has been the government bond market, where a seemingly unstoppable rise in long bond yields has been worrying investors of late.
Here’s the UK 30-year, for example:
Source: This Is Money
There are many suggestions as to why such yields have kept rising.
The easiest one is that inflation has proven stickier than expected, due mostly to the Iran war but also ongoing trade spats.
Another is that politicians are proving unable – or unwilling – to get a grip on over-spending in countries like the US, France, and the UK, and that the resultant deficits – which add ever more debt to already over-burdened state finances – risk fuelling a doom loop.
Still others argue that the US economy in particular is running hot, so why shouldn’t yields be at this level? They might be very uncomfortable given today’s big national debt piles, but a glance at that UK chart above shows such yields are hardly unprecedented.
And inevitably there’s an AI angle, too.
Crowded House
The so-called hyper-scalers building the data centres required by the AI boom – Google, Amazon, Meta et al – have been issuing vast amounts of debt to fund this expansion.
And an argument runs that this is potentially crowding out would-be buyers of conventional government debt.
As Fortune reports, even US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has argued as much, saying recently:
“We are also seeing big corporate issuance. And a lot of that corporate issuance, I would say, is almost yield-agnostic, because the build-out for AI, the returns on that, the companies believe they’re going to be so high. They don’t really care what they’re paying.”
A massive surge of debt issuance might ordinarily be expected to spike corporate bond yields higher – in order to provide a sufficiently juicy premium over government bonds to attract buyers.
But demand for the hyper-scaler AI-spending bonds has been so high that the yield spread has barely budged.
According to Wall Street veteran Ed Yardeni:
“As a result, the market has adjusted not through higher corporate borrowing costs relative to Treasuries but through higher Treasury yields themselves.
Capital flowing into corporate bonds is capital not flowing into Treasuries, and Treasury yields have had to rise to clear the market.
In short, the AI revolution is producing a classic crowding-out effect, causing Treasury yields to rise.”
It sounds credible. But I’ve come up with a more apocalyptic possibility.
Can’t pay, won’t pay
What if the market is starting to sniff out that national governments are going to struggle to repay their debts – ignoring inflation, of course – not just because they will not curb state spending, but because AI dislocation in the economy means they won’t be able to raise sufficient taxes?
In many dark winner-takes-all scenarios, most of the economic gains from technology in the future will only go to the owners of AI (and robots) who will steadily take work and jobs from humans.
This is exactly why some AI insiders have been urging governments to start thinking about Universal Basic Incomes for all citizens, for instance.
Well, someone must fund those stipends for everyone. And a thing about tech oligarchs is they’re proving pretty resistant to paying more taxes.
In other words, maybe we really could see enormous productivity gains and economic surplus created by AI and robots.
But who will actually capture those gains – and will the state be able to tax them?
If government bond buyers are beginning to wonder whether enough people will still be on the hook – and on a payroll – to be taxed to meet debt obligations in 20 or 30 years time, then they would surely demand more return upfront before buying.
Hence higher yields.
Cliff-edge notes
To be clear I’m just floating this as a thought experiment.
We have seen very strong corporations borrow at very low rates in the past, without an AI takeover story to justify the rates.
And today the hyperscalers are still paying a premium over US Treasuries.
But if that were to flip – if yields on the safest government bonds were to go meaningfully above the yields on AI-backed debt – then that could be a sign that at least one doomsday scenario may be coalescing into reality.
I know – it seems far-fetched.
But a lot of clever people have said a lot of wild and scary things in recent years about where AI could soon take us.
Is it then really such a stretch to believe that if some of those scenarios looked like coming true that we’d see it in the most important market in the world – the US bond market?
I’d suggest it’d actually be very rational!
Who knows? If you’re truly certain about where this is all going then I’d say you’ve not been paying enough attention.
Have a great weekend, and a few more links on that bond market tumult:
Rates rising mini-special
- The world appears to be entering a higher-rate era – CNBC
- How will bond market turmoil affect your finances? – Guardian
- The bond market blowout spells Budget pain – This Is Money
- Stocks are sexy, but bonds are more important – Axios
- Crisis talks – Behavioural Investment
From Monevator
Paying off the mortgage with your pension – Monevator
From the archive-ator: 10 things to do today to reset your life – Monevator
News
UK long-term borrowing costs highest since 1998 – BBC
House prices up 0.2% in ‘subdued’ August, says Nationwide – Standard
Three more firms join exodus from London Stock Exchange – City AM
Netherlands moves billions in gold to London in ‘crisis preparedness’ – BBC
760,000 matured Child Trust Funds still remain unclaimed – FCA
Revolut wins conditional US banking licence – Reuters
Nearly a million low-earners owed a pension top-up by HMRC… – Which
…but another million are now in the higher tax brackets – This Is Money
South Korea is boring its day traders out of recklessness – Yahoo Finance
IKEA cuts prices amid cost-of-living crisis – BBC
Figure 1: UK real household income outlook downgraded post-conflict
Iran War to cost each UK household £2,400 by next year – C.E.B.R.
Products and services
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Santander switch offer: £240 cash, 8% on regular savings – B.C.W.Y.C.
The cheapest mortgage lenders in the market – Which
Make sure you're getting all the latest Monevator articles via our free newsletter – Subscribe now
Coventry BS offers first-time buyers 6.5x salary mortgages – T.I.M.
Protect yourself from QR parking code scams – Be Clever With Your Cash
Want the very best of Monevator? Become a member to get our exclusive premium content – Find out more
Virgin Money 6.5% regular saver review – Be Clever With You Cash
Natwest’s £500 Premier current account switch bonus – This Is Money
Homes for sale minutes from a train station, in pictures – Guardian
Comment and opinion
Investing when your portfolio gets bigger – A Wealth of Common Sense
The more important forms of currency – The Root of All
Investment growth creates 65% of a typical pension pot – This Is Money
If you’re worried about bonds, you’re doing them wrong – Morningstar
How divorce can drive you into pension poverty – Which
Ten truths about spending down your nest egg – The Purpose Code
Ben Carlson: risk, reward, and the future [Podcast] – Flyover Stocks
What’s a safe retirement rate after you’ve already retired? – Morningstar
Victor Haghani: risk, ruin, reinvention, and resilience [Podcast] – T.I.P.
Naughty corner: Active antics
The scaling versus profitability trade-off – Aswath Damodaran
The crowd isn’t stupid, just reckless – The Falling Knife
Sarah’s wager [A few weeks old] – Colossus
Solvency is a necessity – RCM Alternatives
The best stock of the last 20 years fell 50% four times – Brian Feroldi
Kindle book bargains
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman – £0.99 on Kindle
The Barclay Dynasty by Jane Martinson – £0.99 on Kindle
Feel-good Productivity by Ali Abdaal – £0.99 on Kindle
Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish – £0.99 on Kindle
Or pick up one of the all-time great investing classics – Monevator shop
Environmental factors
The race to stop England running out of water – BBC
Meet the women leading Norway’s seaweed revolution – Vogue
Argos becomes first UK retailer to sell plug-in solar panels – Independent
Kākāpō rising: 90 chicks swell population of heaviest parrot – Guardian
Robot overlord roundup
The rise and fall of agent civilisations – Dwarkesh Patel
nVidia strikes $12.9bn deal to buy AI platform Hugging Face – BBC
We can’t let AI writing take over the Internet – Derek Thompson
London’s first self-driving taxis for hire hit the streets – Guardian
Not at the dinner table
Jim O’Neill: capital gains tax hike looms under Burnham – City AM
Brexit’s lessons for Canada in its trade rift with US – The Conversation
Iceland’s ties with EU mean no is not a Brexit-style rejection – Guardian
The rise of ‘Cancer Capital’ – Anil Dash
US medical groups urge flu and Covid shots, despite Trump – Guardian
Life choices and goals mini-special
The discipline required to live the life you want – Ryan Holiday
Alan Watts: everything in life is a game – Darius Foroux
The private equity boyfriend economy – Your Brain on Money
Why deny kids out of fear of making them lazy? – The Purpose Code
Off our beat
London’s housebuilding woes: the sums don’t work – Standard
The wretched refuse – Colossus
A review of 1991’s unsettling Aztecs: An Interpretation – Mr & Mrs P
Should we eradicate mosquitos? – Uncharted Territories
An Unexpected Life by Gloria Steinem review – Guardian
I refuse to miss my daily exercises, says 103-year-old – BBC
And finally…
“I didn’t save money until I was past 50. I was sure that I’d end up as a bag lady, like women I saw sleeping in subway stations. I used to handle that fear by thinking: It’s a life like any other. I’ll organise the other bag ladies.”
– Gloria Steinem, An Unexpected Life
Note this article includes affiliate links, such as from Amazon and Interactive Investor.
Great article, I am not too worried that govt debt will be repaid, after all the printing presses can be switched on, at the cost of more inflation. Perhaps the datacentres should be taxed based on installed capacity, an extra tax, rather like stamp duty on share transactions, this would probably be easier than taxing token consumption, given all the difficulties with cross border usage. Sure inflation would tick up, but that will be the case anyway if the mag 7 really are yield agnostics.
I think the thesis makes a lot of sense. If AI is as disruptive and profitable as the valuations of Nvidia, OpenAI, Anthropic etc imply, then it will replace many well-paid jobs, which happen to be the core taxpayers. And we’ve seen for a long time that politicians are happy to tax labour and unwilling to tax capital properly (well, these are the people who fund their campaigns…)
I’m less convinced that the bond markets are pricing this scenario at the moment, because of, as you say, the hyperscalers’ premium over USTs.
Inflation expectations only explain about a third of the rate move in the US. And government defaults are very unlikely but (as @Bassavoce said) their escape hatch should drive inflation. Which makes me think that inflation protection is wildly underpriced at the moment.
The main driver seems to be simple supply/demand: More debt issued from governments, plus the hyperscalers, vs structurally less demand: rewinding of QE, shift away from USD in central bank reserves, pension funds buy less, and bonds are less useful now for portfolio diversification.
@Sparschwein (#2):
Re: “Which makes me think that inflation protection is wildly underpriced at the moment.”
So consider buying it while you can; especially if it is offering good VFM. Just one example is that you have not been able to be an inflation linked Annuity in the US since 2019 IIRC.
FWIW, my own view is that inflation linked products are at no more or no less risk of default than nominal products, but …
Call me a coward or an idiot but my main investment portfolio for a while now has moved away from 100% VWRP, which is what I previously held for a long time. Not only am I massively underperforming AI/tech but also massively underperforming broader index (less than 10% YoY I think compared to 23% on VWRP).
I’m holding:
– 20% MMF
– 10% long term US treasuries (20+ year)
– 10% mixed term global government bonds with average effective duration around 7 years
– 20% gold
– 40% VWRP
The whole currency debasement thesis makes sense to me as a way out of government debt, but then it’s widely expected and I can’t recall I time when I personally predicted the macro future correctly so *confused shrug*
@AlCam (#3):
Do you trust official inflation measures? I don’t mean that in a conspiracy sense of government deliberately messing around (although I wouldn’t put it past them) so much as the inherent limitations of any fixed methodology.
I think Monevator already did articles on this but I could swear my lived reality is nothing like CPI or even RPI. That’s one of my personal reasons for staying away from inflation linked stuff, particularly inflation linked gilts, which I’d otherwise be interested in – it relies on a fixed methodology for calculating inflation which could be quite different from reality. At least equities have some kind of more implicit inflation adjustment that doesn’t rely as much on being able to define what we mean by inflation.
@NL (#5):
Re: “Do you trust official inflation measures?”
After a lengthy period of “research”, yes!
I have written extensively about this elsewhere.
Thanks for these, I really enjoyed the Sarah’s Wager and Root of All links, for different reasons. The pace of change in the AI world is staggering and yet it still feels far away to me in my daily life. I can’t imagine ever wanting to have an AI agent at home to tell me that I don’t have enough vitamins or to congratulate me on drinking my water.
The house in Pannal is a dead ringer ( apart from the extension of course) for the council house in one of the new towns where we lived during the early 70s. The timber detailing, the stairs, the floor plan, all very familiar. This one must be in a good area to be worth £450k.
I took my family back to our old house about 10 years ago. Apart from a few holdouts, random terrace houses, the entire estate, including our house, had been levelled. Apparently it had become a centre for anti social behaviour and yet our time there was idyllic in many ways, landscaping, green spaces, play areas etc. While we were standing looking at the place where our house had been some guys turned up out of nowhere and asked us what we were doing, we were back in the car fairly soon after that.
@Al Cam: I’ve shifted ~12% if my total into a linker ladder this year. Another 2-4% will probably go into TIPS, depends if/how I can buy individual TIPS in my SIPP. My concern is, is this bold enough? And how much of my partner’s investments to move? (She’s still riding the AI gravy train in her job.)
There’s a scenario where the AI bubble pops, the next debt crisis and lengthy recession ensues, and we look back at this year as a generational opportunity to de-risk and set up a worry-free retirement.
Not saying this *will* happen, just that it’s plausible that it *might* happen.
@Northern Lad: Not even the experts can predict the macro future (remember inflation in 2021 was supposed to be “transitory” etc…)
If 40% in stocks is the level of risk you’re comfortable with, that’s ok and better to adjust now. Many people find out too late, during a crash what their real risk tolerance is.
I think the other 60% could be diversified to add more inflation protection. See The Accumulator’s excellent piece https://monevator.com/60-40-dilemma/
It’s a fair concern that your personal experience of inflation may be different from the official measures. But it seems to me that you are rejecting the less-than-perfect inflation protection from linkers, and replaced them with the inflation vulnerability of cash and nominal bonds.
@ Sparschwein. To get individual TIPS into my SIPP, I ended up opening an Interactive Brokers SIPP (through @SIPP). This also allows (somewhat fudged) currency hedging with M6B futures, should you so wish.
The downside is that @SIPP charge a big chunk (just gone up to £391/year I think). If you finder a better/cheaper option, please share!
On Blade Runner scenarios, see below from Conduit:
“Building telepathy at scale; using AI to turn thought-to-text”
https://condu.it/thought/10k-hours
@platformer. (11)
“… We started out putting each participant in a separate room at a normal work station. We saw huge noise spikes in the data from participants moving their heads, and sometimes they’d get up and walk around with the headset on or take the headset off without telling us. The solution to this was putting multiple booths in one shared room for easier supervision. We also installed chinrests that hold participants’ heads still, which help reduce motion artifacts in the data….”
I wonder at what point the treatment of people as lab rats becomes unacceptable ?
@Vroom – that’s good to know. AJB are very good for linkers. They said that some TIPS can be traded “on case-by-case basis”. We’ll see if it works.
Currency hedging is another “project” that I may need to take on. It’s about a 50/50 chance that we will retire in the Eurozone. The main reason I didn’t buy more linkers was to limit our GBP exposure in case we’ll move away.
@ Sparschwein. Interesting, thanks. Do AJB charge for currency conversion? That’s a big advantage of Interactive Brokers, you can do the FX at spot (so mid, basically).
@Sparschwein (#9)
I’ve taken the plunge and subscribed just to be able to read that article and I’m glad I did. It engages with a lot of my worries
I accept your point about linkers. Interesting that the article stops short of completely recommending them without reservations, partly due to back test limitations. I think I’ll end up going a little more into equities, dropping the long term bonds, reducing gold exposure a bit, and picking up some broader commodities and index-linked gilts.
I’m considering:
– 60% Vanguard Global All-Cap (VALL)
– 10% WisdomTree Physical Gold (GLDW)
– 10% L&G All Commodities (BCOG)
– 10% iShares GBP Index-Linked Gilts (INXG)
– 10% MMF
What do you reckon to that?
@Northern Lad (15)
INXG has a very long duration, so interest rate risk dominates any inflation protection you may get from the constituent linkers. I own a small amount (now even smaller!) of INXG and was dimly aware of the risk, but it was brought home to me in a brutal fashion in 2022 when both interest rates and inflation spiked. Take a look at its performance curve for 2022.
You need to do some more Monevator reading on linkers. Unfortunately there is not much around in terms of short-duration linker funds/ETFs. I believe Legal & General now do a o-5 year linker fund, but there is a distinct lack of a comparable ETF from any provider. I think the conclusion has been that a short rolling ladder of individual short-duration linkers, held to maturity, is the best approach for general inflation protection. That raises the problem that many platforms require telephone dealing for linkers, and only show the clean price (i.e. without the inflation uplift) in your portfolio valuation. As mentioned by Sparschwein (13), A J Bell seem good for linkers and I understand don’t suffer from these limitations.
@DavidV (#16)
Gosh, yes, I had totally missed that. I can’t indeed find anything that totally fits in ETF form which is my usual preferred mechanism for easy use. I see there may be a few options:
1. iShares $ TIPS 0-5 UCITS ETF (TI5G): global but currency hedged – might this be okay? 0.12% TER sounds reasonable.
2. L&G Under 5 Year Index Linked Gilts Index Fund (LUAC and Unit Trust or OEIC equivalents) – not as easy to use maybe as an ETF but seems identical in intent to what we’re after so could be an option.
3. Just buying the actual individual linkers themselves – I guess this is what Monevator readers generally do, as you mentioned, but at that point the admin piles up more than feels worth it at my relatively modest portfolio size, especially if it’s considered interchangeable with other inflation defences that are easier to buy and rebalance into desired proportion.
@Vroom – AJB FX fees per trade are 0.75% for the first £10k, 0.5% for the next 10k, and 0.25% above 20k. I suppose it’s acceptable for a 20-year bond that pays 3% real. Not nearly as good as IBKR’s FX, but then there are the @SIPP fees.
@Northern Lad – I think the first and most important decision is, how much in the stock market. It depends mainly on two things: your age and time horizon, and your risk tolerance. Stocks are very very risky over shorter periods (say a few years) and considerably less risky over decades. But only if one can hold for as long, without either needing the cash or losing one’s nerve in a crash. The reward is a high expected (not guaranteed!) return. Risk tolerance is a personal thing, it’s a matter of finding the right balance of assets one feels comfortable with.
FWIW, 10% each in cash, gold and linkers looks sensible to me. Individual linkers held to maturity, matched to expected expenses, are as close to a “safe asset” there is. What we care about is purchasing power, after all.
5-10% in commodities makes sense too in this mix. Commodities can go through very long periods of losses, so it requires a bit of conviction to keep holding because they have a “job” in the portfolio.
@Northern Lad (17)
TI5G is what I settled on as my main inflation-linked holding. It’s far from ideal as it tracks US inflation, of course. I’ve only recently discovered the L&G fund – I think it must be quite new. The problem is that funds are much more expensive to hold than ETFs on my platform.
I’d like to switch to individual linkers, but I think I would need to transfer my ISA to A J Bell to make the linker purchase and monitoring feasible.
Buying linkers is really easy at AJ Bell. The Accumulator has written up detailed instructions.
In short
– pick a linker from the list https://www.ajbell.co.uk/investment/bonds/gilts/prices
– start an online order
– the system provides an “indicative price” (not the final price, that’s where the process is a bit different from ETFs or stocks)
– accept and place the order
– execution may take half an hour or so
– the linker appears in the portfolio overview with the correct (dirty) market price
I checked the spread from AJB against the IBKR mid-point for professional trades. My actual price was 0.07% – 0.12% over the professional mid-point. I think that’s fair for retail orders.
@Sparschwein, @DavidV
Thank you both – your comments have been exceptionally helpful. I am still under-informed on some of the nuances, and will try to read more to solidify my understanding. However, I have a clear idea now of the broad assets I want to hold going forward. Understanding better why super long bonds are probably not right for me has been a particular revelation.
I’ll give the extent of my equity exposure some more thought. As I mentioned before, I did hold 100% for most of my investment career to date, and it’s only recently that I’ve thought I might be better off with something different. The shape of the non equity portion at least feels more solid than previously.
Many thanks again (and of course to Monevator itself for the excellent posts).
@Northern Lad – glad it was helpful. Good luck!
@Sparschwein, @DavidV. I’ve held linkers through HL, iWeb and ii and it’s the same process you describe at AJB (though the ‘holdings’ page often doesn’t display the correct dirty price with these three, so you have to keep an eye on that from an external source). AIUI, all of these retails platforms go through to the same brokers (Peel Hunt and Winterflood typically) to get filled the roughly 0.1% back from mid.
Job losses through AI rollout in isolation would be a strong deflationary force, but I guess it depends whether governments monetise debt to pay for the consequences.
I hold no index linked gilts at present but have held INXG in the past during and following the GFC. I exited well before interest rates started rising so missed the bloodbath of 2022.
Since then the average weighted maturity of INXG has dropped from about 18 years to 14 or less.
I don’t think it is a terrible option anymore if you can’t be bothered to build and maintain a ladder of individual index linked gilts.
I look at the price chart over the last 20 years and it is a shocker for INXG but it looks like a much safer place to enter given where real yields are today.
Few other assets offer stagflation protection with an income. Perhaps some types of property but with financing catches when rates rise.
Which is the problem for me with holding gold and commodities within a natural yield income portfolio that runs on autopilot.
I’m thinking about maybe a 10% allocation to index linked gilts.
@Northern Lad
If you want a bit more duration and you decide to put up with a fund rather than an ETF, iShares have this one, with a duration around just under 5 years:
https://www.blackrock.com/uk/literature/fact-sheet/ishares-up-to-10-years-index-linked-gilt-index-fund-uk-class-d-inc-dist-gbp-factsheet-gb00bn091j35-gb-en-individual.pdf
Windy
@Vroom #24 – thanks for sharing this.
No progress with TIPS or Bund€i’s at AJB. Many show up in the search, but it has not been possible to place an online order. Customer service has been unhelpful so far. If I manage to buy them somehow, I’ll post it here.
Customer service has clarified this now:
“Unfortunately we do not trade any TIPS or Bund€i’s at AJ Bell, on any type of account.
These still appear on the search because the search data comes from a third party called Morningstar. They show almost every investment but it doesn’t always mean we can actually trade them”
@Sparschwein,
I have been following your comments to this post with interest. Can I throw a couple of further ideas into the pot:
a) do you have any familial contacts to the Euro zone and/or dollar region; and
b) several @M commenters have made noises about $TIPS is the past which led me to think they may hold some, IIRC, I am thinking about @Seeking FIRE and @Delta Hedge; I am pretty sure there were others too over and above @Vroom. Best of luck.
@Al Cam – thanks. I might convince my father to buy more Bund€i’s. For the TIPS, use my GIA, or use an ETF. Neither is ideal…
Btw, I’ve been doing a modelling thing with GPT-5.6 and GPT-6, basically Cederburg-like but including inflation-linked bonds, gold and commodity futures. (Trying to fix the assets limitation that makes Cederburg’s results useless in practice, beyond “diversify your stocks and don’t hold *nominal* bonds”).
Results are still preliminary. It tells me to increase the allocation to the linker ladder, but sovereign default becomes a point of failure. Bund€i’s and TIPS would be useful to diversify this.
@Sparschwein:
Re: Bund€i’s: is there any way your father could buy them for you such that they are in your name and not his? Or, are there some tax rules that mean the “name on the certificate” is not that important?
AFAICT, Wordpress is very poor at searching the comments to posts – the only way I know to look back over previous comments @M is the long-hand, tedious and rather time consuming approach of going from blog to blog and searching for the commenters name.
Turns out Google AI can be of some assistance with searching comments @M. For example, it fairly quickly helped me locate the one [US TIPS related] comment by @SF in this post from a few years back: https://monevator.com/pound-cost-averaging-the-buy-low-superpower/
@Vroom (24)
Apologies for the late reply – I’m on holiday and not keeping up as much as usual. It is my understanding that with both IWeb/SW and HL, not only does the portfolio valuation show only the clean price, but you have to deal by telephone for linkers. (Conventional gilts can be dealt online.)
@ Sparschwein. Interactive Brokers have emailed to say they’ll be removing access to futures in SIPP’s, including the M6B FX future I use to roughly hedge the FX exposure of the TIPS. Not ideal.
@David V. That’s right re only clean price showing on these platforms, you have to go to another source such as Dividend Data for the dirty prices. With ii and HL dealing is by phone, but you’re charged web commission. With iWeb/SW it’s online, though it still takes the 5 minutes or so to get your fill. AFAICT it’s routed through the same brokers (Peel Hunt and Winterflood), so you get the same fill as the other platforms. Just a little quicker than waiting on the phone, which ii in particular seem to drag out for ages!
@Vroom (34)
Thanks for the reply. It was news to me that you can now deal linkers online at IWeb/SW. I have bought conventional gilts online on that platform but I’m sure that last time I searched for a linker it told me I had to deal by telephone. As my GIA is with IWeb, a linker is the obvious home for the funds from an ILSC that has just matured.