What caught my eye this week.
Technology marches on. I almost got knocked over by a stealthy Tesla this morning. The electric vehicles proliferate along my street like units spawning in a real-time strategy game.
Meanwhile, Apple is readying its Vision Pro headset to immerse us in new realities – or at least its App store – while chatbot AIs conspire in the wings. India just launched a mission to the other side of the moon.
Monevator is not being left behind in this tumult. That’s right! Thanks to your support and the efforts of our hard-working engineer(s), we’ve finally enabled reader edits in our comment section.
That’s right, no need to regret one ‘s’ too many in the word ‘recession’ anymore. When you post a comment, you will have five minutes to give it a read through and tweak. You can also delete your comment entirely if you have second thoughts.
For Monevator members, there’s no time limit. Your comments will always be editable and can be deleted, provided you’re logged-in and posting under your registered email address.
Update 18/7/2023: Following reader feedback and further thought, we’ve decided allowing comments to remain open forever could have more downside than upside. However I’m also increasing the time limit for editing to 10 minutes, which I hope should cover most scenarios!
Say what?
Our comments are home to excellent discussions, and I’ve long resisted tampering with a winning formula. But editing has been requested many times. Hopefully this strikes the right balance.
One worry I’ve had is a rare malicious poster manipulating their comments for nefarious reasons. The timer should restrict the scope for that. We’re implicitly trusting members to be good actors by removing the time limit for them.
But just to be safe, all edits are tracked and stored. If someone does say something just to start a row and then sneakily goes back and changes what they wrote – a big reason I’ve avoided allowing edits for so long – then we’ll know.
For 99.9% of you this is irrelevant. But trolls beware!
Otherwise bumper links this week, with lots to be discussed. How crazy is that graph of parental help for house deposits? Then there’s the pension shake-up shenanigans…
Enjoy the reading – and maybe the writing and – have a great weekend.
From Monevator
How well do commodities protect against UK inflation? [Members] – Monevator
Interest rates on cash at investment platforms – Monevator
From the archive-ator: Summertime [2020] and the living is queasy – Monevator
News
Note: Some links are Google search results – in PC/desktop view click through to read the article. Try privacy/incognito mode to avoid cookies. Consider subscribing to sites you visit a lot.
Mortgage rates hit a 15-year high in Britain – Which
Renting a room tops £700 a month; £971 in London – Guardian
GDP fell 0.1% in May – Guardian
Bank of England: mortgage defaults rise 30% in three months – This Is Money
National debt could reach 300% of GDP by 2070s, says ONS – Sky News
Ripple notches landmark win with SEC over cryptocurrency – Reuters
Home ownership in Britain has become a hereditary privilege [Search result] – FT
Pension raid to boost blighted Brexit Britain* news mini-special
‘Mansion House reforms’ seek to channel pension savings into unlisted firms [Search result] – FT
All the official pointers and documents regarding Jeremy Hunts proposals – GOV.UK
Rolling the dice on British pensions [Podcast, excellent overview but the call for local authority apparatchiks to make sub-scale investments in unlisted local projects using other people’s life savings is bonkers IMHO] – A Long Time In Finance
How to opt out of Hunt’s risky plans for your pension [Search result] – FT
Pensions industry tries to get to grips with ‘avalanche’ of developments – Pensions Age
I told you so – Monevator
*I may be editorializing a tad.
Products and services
Coventry’s new easy access account pays 4.5%; four withdrawals a year – This Is Money
TSB launches £200 bank-switching offer – Which
Transfer your SIPP to Interactive Investor in July and get from £100 to £3,000 in cashback, plus pay no SIPP fee for six months. Terms apply – Interactive Investor
NS&I boosts rate on one-year bond to 5% – NS&I
UK banks improve rates for savers after FCA meeting [Search result] – FT
Open an account with low-cost platform InvestEngine via our link and get £25 when you invest at least £100 (T&Cs apply. Capital at risk) – InvestEngine
What to do if your phone gets stolen – Which
MMM reviews his Tesla Model Y – Mr Money Mustache
Amazing UK homes to rent, in pictures – Guardian
Comment and opinion
Passive investors: enough with the puritanism – Humble Dollar
Labour’s plan will not transform UK’s poor economic prospects [Search result] – FT
Gen Z want to work ‘lazy girl jobs’. Who could blame them? – Guardian
Bill Bernstein revisits The Four Pillars of Investing – Morningstar
Wealthy UK borrowers face interest-only mortgage shock [Search result; yep] – FT
Should emerging markets play a role in your portfolio? – Morningstar
Why 1966 was the worst year to retire – Think Advisor
Understanding Fat FIRE: an in-depth guide – Of Dollars and Data
UK consumers splashed the cash, and helped push prices up – David Smith
Have older investors become too aggressive? – Morningstar
Career – Indeedably
What exactly is your problem with stock index concentration? [Search result] – FT
A blueprint for peak retirement – A Teachable Moment
Naughty corner: Active antics
UK PLC going cheap. [I wonder what happened in 2016…?] – Merryn via Twitter
Private equity firms add debt. That’s just about it – Verdad
The UK market boasts an abundance of high-yield stocks – UK Dividend Investor
A first-half investment trust portfolio review – IT Investor
Are you a good investor? – Maynard Paton
This US small cap has paid an unbroken dividend for 205 years – Motley Fool
Ten graphs that show how the year has been full of surprises (as usual) – Bilello
Signs of hope for late-stage private market valuations – Axios
Kindle book bargains
Money Men by Dan McCrum [On the Wirecard fraud] – £2.99 on Kindle
The Ride of a Lifetime by Bob Iger – £0.99 on Kindle
How to Own the World by Andrew Craig – £0.99 on Kindle
Environmental factors
How alt fund managers became green energy leaders – Institutional Investor
Orca whales are ramming boats. Why? – Guardian
How ancient ‘skywells’ keep old Chinese homes cool – BBC
Scientists are ready to formally declare the Anthropocene era – Sky News
Will you catch dengue fever in Europe this summer? – Which
Researchers find 176 bird species using man-made materials in nests – The Conversation
Scientist says we’re in “uncharted territory” after world’s hottest week on record – Lad Bible
Turning humid air into renewable power – Guardian
Robot overlord roundup
How AI chatbots can help you understand – Humble Dollar
Off our beat
What did people do before smartphones? – The Atlantic via MSN
Do hard things if you want an easy life – Darius Foroux
What to make of physicist’s claim to alien discovery? – The Conversation via Yahoo
The 2023 Comedy Pet Photography Awards, in pictures – Guardian
The story behind the Mission Impossible theme tune – The Honest Broker
Peak China and the coming of ‘Altasia’ – Noahpinion
And finally…
“Reps, reps, reps.”
– Arnold Schwarzenegger, Total Recall
Like these links? Subscribe to get them every Friday. Note this article includes affiliate links, such as from Amazon and Interactive Investor.
I’m going for the cynical git award, but “UK Equities trade at a record discount to US peers” is comparing the FTSE100 with the S&P500. The latter contains AAPL, META, AMZN, MSFT. The former, no comparable behemoths. So there’s a reason for that discount, and it’s not just the Brexit malus. It’s that they aren’t peers.
I like the Humble Dollar’s framing of passive investment decisions. No doubt TA has covered them in the past, but it’s a useful reminder of things that a passive investor still has to consider.
FT’s stock concentration piece a stand out. Gets closer to causes of some quite knotty performance issues. Couldn’t agree more with @ermine #1. Also, whilst doubtlessly there are reasons to look at FTSE100 as part of HYP or value oriented portfolios, there’s nothing magically attractive to the fact it trades at a record discount to SP500. By all means, invest in HY Footsie shares (like those listed by UK Dividend Investor in links); but it’s no guarantee of anything.
I think “lazygirl” jobs are nothing new. The receptionist who does little but greet people and make tea for guests is the epitome of the phenomena, surely. As the article suggests you do need a certain privilege ie to be able to look like you fit in, and ugly people need not apply.
I am not sure who Humble Dollar is referring to – who are these Puritans? Surely a truly puritanical passive investor would not be reading anything that challenged their views anyway? 😉
He does make a good point though. Passive/active is not a binary issue, but a spectrum. I consider myself to be closer to the passive end, but I do make active choices. I came out of bonds in the Covid stock market melt down for example. I also choose what equity trackers to invest in, engage in factor investing (to my detriment), choose our overall asset allocation (90% equities, 10% cash, 0% everything else), how much to draw down each year and give to charities, family, etc.
I am not a stock picker, but I am still an active investor.
I have been following the orca story for some time. We don’t intend to cross Biscay in our new boat, don’t have the insurance cover either, but these orcas would give me second thoughts if I did.
Ps. The edit feature is useful, but you probably should restrict it to 10 minutes.
There are some sites that do not want any dramas/negativity with comments and have not enabled them, but your site and Rob’s http://www.headforpoints.com are treasure-troves from reader comments, so keep that going !
@ermine — That is definitely part of it (if you follow the link to the Twitter thread you’ll find me having a big discussion about exactly this). You can also see a similar de-rating of various European bourses for a similar tech-lite reason. But I believe the UK market has the (un)edge for its special factors post-2016. If only that international capital slapped on a discount, rightly or wrongly.
@tetromino — I think there’s been an evolution over the life of this site towards this better understanding of the overlaps between active and passive, too. But yes, @TA isn’t dogmatic as such. Many years ago he asked me what UK small cap investment trust he might invest in, for example, as there wasn’t a passive ETF equivalent. I believe he still has it. Been a bit ‘meh’ with the rest of the UK market IIRC.
@TLI — There’s absolutely no guarantees, especially over the short-term, but over the longer-term cheaper cyclical PE ratios are the best (but still far from foolproof) tool we have for gauging expected returns. Certainly things can change. I wrote an article in something like 2012 about how we shouldn’t write off the US market, which seems bonkers now! As a fully paid-up secular tech boom kinda guy I can’t imagine the situation will entirely reverse, but strange things do happen in markets. Especially with dividends added in haha.
@G — Agreed, I don’t think the lazy jobs are new as such. Back when I was a student they were called ‘McJobs’. But that slacker culture died when people started recruiting graduates to man tills and many fast-food servers had to take part in corporate team building etc. Plus everyone kind of started not to hate work so much, when the Internet came along and you could slack off quite effectively with a few discrete windows on your PC screen at work… 😉
@Naeclue — Interesting. Given some of our back and forths in the distant past I’d put you on nodding terms with the passive puritans 😉 Not that you haven’t backed up your own position choices with reason and evidence. You have. But I wouldn’t say you were at the front of the line to tell people “whatever floats your boat”, let’s put it that way. 😉 Talking of boats! (I’ve been following the orca stuff too. At first I thought maybe it has always happened but it was simply being reframed by publicity, in the same way we used to get dangerous dog scares every three years or so but with a new breed. But the scientists do seem to see something divergent here.)
Re: the commenting, do you mean set 10 minutes because 5 minutes is too short, or do you mean logged in users should also have a time limit but in their case 10 minutes? Either way, what’s your thinking? 🙂
@flyer123 — Cheers! It’s a lot of extra work; at least 10% of my Monevator time and probably closer to 20%. (I moderate the site all day on the phone for example). But I agree we’ve been rewarded with an excellent discussion culture in the main, so it feels worth it.
Thanks for the links, as always good reading @TI
Having just got back from Naples in the baking heat, the ‘How ancient ‘skywells’ keep old Chinese homes cool’ was a read I could not pass.
What struck me was, on my visits to Herculaneum and Pompeii, Most of the big houses had the same ‘skywell’ technology but pre-dated the Chinese architecture by a millennium and a half. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavaedium
Have a great weekend 🙂
JimJim
EDIT: Just because I now can 🙂 . Probably an improvement for me especially when I post on my phone with its annoying keyboard and persistent autocorrect. Thanks for this.
@TI #7 there’s just so much to unpack on and around cyclically adjusted PE.
When your brilliant and epic piece:
https://monevator.com/the-cyclically-adjusted-pe-ratio-pe10-or-shiller-pe/
came out in 2012, I was a fully fledged CAPE believer; but by the time of @TA’s super 2023 update:
https://monevator.com/cape-ratio-by-country/
I’d mostly lost faith in the measure, other than for dynamical SWR purposes, as was covered so ably in 2021 in @TA’s superb piece:
https://monevator.com/dynamic-asset-allocation-and-withdrawal-in-retirement/
There’s enough analysis and argument over the CAPE out there online in both articles and freely accessible research papers to fill Jorge Luis Borges’ Library of Babel. I’ll not begin to try to summarise it here, but suffice to say that the more you dig into this subject, and the more difficult and fundamental questions that you try to ask about CAPE, the more uncertain and nuanced the picture becomes. As I recall one of the innumerable commentators on the subject concluded, a high CAPE may be a warning sign of sorts, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a call for action.
Some immensely clever people have held to the CAPE faith, in spite of the original ‘plain vanilla’ version very arguably not working since around 1990, at least in the US (e.g. Arnott, Advisor Perspectives etc).
Others have taken a cautious approach (i.e. it’s flawed, but it might sometimes tell us something useful – e.g. Philosophical Economics, Swedroe, Faber etc).
And some have just gone and rejected CAPE entirely upon the basis of one or both of first principle and/or empirical grounds (e.g., perhaps most notably, Goldman Sachs in 2022).
What we can safely say, I think, is that questions of CAPE’s efficacy, for what purposes it is and is not suitable, and the extent of its usefulness, each remain quite contentious and open subjects.
@flyer123 #6 – good to see another HfP reader! I think that makes at least 3 of us here (incl. @Genghis, iirc)
#9 linking to that old article on dynamic asset allocation & withdrawal reminded me that a while ago I asked @TA how his strategy of Prime Harvesting (or selling bonds first) was progressing, and I think he did say an article would be forthcoming. Would really like to hear about whether he was able to stick to it in this bond meltdown.
@TI:
Re: “Pension raid to boost blighted Brexit Britain* news mini-special”
Excellent set of informative links to a “glorious mishmash” (to quote the referenced podcast) of ideas. Glad I dug into the links as for some reason I had thought this latest brain wave (ahem?) re pensions was limited to DC schemes. It certainly is not, and “it seems some people now want to throw our pensions onto the bonfire too” – to steal one of @TI’s memorable lines from the referenced Monevator link.
EDIT – just to try out the editing facility!!
EDIT 2 – it does seem to considerably slow down the acceptance of a comment, but otherwise seems a good idea!
@Murphy 🙂
Have you got your eye on the introduction of comment editing on this blog?
I highly recommend the Morning Star’s Long View podcast interview with Bill Bernstein linked this weekend. Bernstein is a fountain of wisdom. His comment on the higher yield of corporate bonds not being high enough to compensate investors for their drop in value exactly at the wrong time is spot on.
There are so many useful insights there that it is hard to mention everything here without making this comment incredibly long. Worth highlighting, I think, are:
* The importance of having a cautious portfolio in order to remain invested at all times so that compounding can do its magic.
* Accept that low correlation portfolio insurance assets will dent your returns a bit (insurance premium and no free lunch).
* The greater inflation-protection likelihood of value stocks as compared to growth stocks.
* Good arguments for why we will be better off with cash and short duration dev government bonds for quite some time rather than long duration. It seems unlikely that long duration will cushion the blow of a stock market drawdown for quite some time (correlations will probably remain positive for a long time in this new regime we have entered recently).
I’ve just tried to add a comment whilst logged on my Monevator account and somehow it has disappeared into the void. This one now is being submitted without logging on.
Perhaps the new edit feature doesn’t work with Firefox and just removes the comment?
@TBDW — Your comment went into spam without me seeing it for some reason. It happens sometimes, very rarely as far as I can tell thankfully!
Have reinstated in all its glory, cheers as ever for contributing to the discussion. 🙂
@TI (#15) – Cheers!
On the ‘skywell’ piece – I was pleased to encounter the term ‘vernacular nostalgia’. I suspect I suffer from it a bit. There’s been recent interest from the BBC, Guardian, and CNN on a similar architectural idea – ‘windcatchers’ – used in the middle east since ancient times. I’m all for incorporating these structures into UK homes though wonder if it might be rather difficult to retrofit them. Perhaps not into, e.g., Edinburgh tenements, as they often have central lightwells – you’d just need to remove the glass at the top and build upwards a few metres. But the typical English house might be more intractable. And rain would be a problem to address! Retractable covers? PS: love the edit function.
@Tom-Baker Dr Who: Bernstein is so very wise. His comment about calls in financial markets being at best 60/40, or even just 51/49, resonates. He makes a powerful & eloquent case here for the persistence of value (and small cap) as useful factors. Whilst I’m a value sceptic (not hostile to value, just sceptical), EM and European small cap value do look extraordinarily cheap both compared to US large cap growth and to their own history. The magnitude of that valuation gap might not mean anything, but is remarkably broad. His comments on the benefits of inflation linked versus level annuities is something which may benefit a wider audience. Note that @ZXSpectrum48k’s former colleague Antti Ilmanen (now AQR) gets a shout out.
[Added via edit function]: OBR report referenced in the Sky News’ link above is terrifying reading. Under quite optimistic assumptions public sector debt reaches 311% of GDP by 2075. If interest rates are sensitive to debt levels this rises to 376%, and if economic shocks continue at same intensity as since 2000 then it hits 435%. It’s a very downbeat report overall (167 pages). Those of a more nervous disposition might want to steer clear!
@Steve – Seen Monevator mentioned many times on hfp, especially the broker comparison table(which is an excellent one – @TheInvestor, though sometimes is difficult to read on Mobile device) when ISA offers come by, so I am sure it is more than the 3 of us common readers across both the sites.
The Morningstar article on retirees being over invested in equities is interesting (and remains a question I continue to grapple with). I’d offer a couple of extra rationales but I’d be interested to hear what the hivemind thinks :
1) At retiree at say age 60 is maybe investing for a further 30 years plus whatever they intend to pass on. That’s probably 3/4 of a full working life so why derisk too aggressively if the pot is large enough?
2) After a certain age in retirement there surely is a point when one knows that investments will make it (bar absolute meltdowns to zero) so why not keep growing the amount you have to pass on?
I guess a decade of equities taking a battering can easily disabuse me of this notion.
@BBBobbins #20: AIM IHT free share portfolios perhaps? Jim Slater, of Growth at Reasonable Prices fame, used to do his AIM picks for IHT planning. I see several outfits are offering prepackaged AIM IHT portfolios, so it’s evidently still a thing, but it’s popularity may be limited because, as Mr Slater put it in 2014: “the majority of AIM stocks are rubbish and are clearly not safe enough for the long haul”.
@TI “Given some of our back and forths in the distant past I’d put you on nodding terms with the passive puritans”.
Nodding terms, certainly, due to the overwhelming evidence in favour of index investing. The 2022 SPIVA report showed that only 5% of US large cap equity funds managed to beat the S&P 500 over the last 20 years. Randomly constructed portfolios would have a far better success rate than that. If I can beat 95% of funds over 20 years by simply buying the index and (arguably more importantly) eliminate the high risk of significant underperformance, then that is all I need to know.
However, if someone wants to weight things a bit differently than the market, occasionally adjusting portfolio allocation according to CAPE say, backing factor investing, or even trend following, then I am not going to say that is nuts. I have dabbled in small cap ETFs, US REITS and low vol. Results so far have been disappointing, but not unexpected. I live in hope!
On the subject of editing, at the moment the comments on an article are frozen, reflecting thoughts at the time. I think you will be losing something if you allow someone to change what they said long after the event.
@BBBobbins, a couple of thoughts. The first is that it is not unreasonable to have an “aggressive” portfolio provided your SWR is reasonably low. Imagine that you have worked out by some mystical technique involving CAPE, historical back tests, Mote Carlo, tea leaves, etc. that a 60/40 equity/bond portfolio with an SWR of 3.5% has a 2% chance of running out 30 years and you are comfortable with that risk. Going for a higher or lower equity allocation increases risk of failure, so you settle on 60/40.
You have £1m, put £600k into a global equities tracker and 40% into a global hedged bond fund, then off you go. But what if you have £2m, but still only desire £35k per year? You then have £1m to invest to decrease risk and/or hopefully leave a legacy. So where do you invest the extra £1m? From a reduction of risk point of view, according to your mystical modelling, it does not make a huge difference whether you put it all in equities, bonds or some in each. In which case you choose to put it all into equities in the expectation of longer term returns and an increased legacy. So now you have a 80/20 portfolio with an SWR of 1.75%.
Essentially, the lower your SWR, the more that can be safely invested into equities.
Going back to the original £1m, let’s say you don’t have an extra £1m initially, but after 10 years you have not experienced the poor sequence of returns that led you to choose a 3.5% SWR and that your current withdrawal rate has dropped to 2% of the remaining portfolio due to growth. Now you can re-run your model and the chances are you can increase your equity allocation as 1) you have a lower SWR and 2) you have a shorter horizon and so need fewer safe assets. Time to increase the equity allocation to increase the legacy! Or spend more.
Thought 2. Once you get into your late 80s or 90s and are fortunate enough to end up with more money than you are ever likely to need, then it might be worthwhile thinking about that legacy. Is it in the best interests of your legatees for their money to be heavily invested into equities? I have a relative in this position. Far more money than she needs, with a withdrawal rate below 1%, invested roughly 60/40 equities/cash, plus property and pensions. She could go to 95+% in equities and would be absolutely fine, even if high care costs need to be paid. However, putting money at risk is absolutely not in the best interests of her beneficiaries when considering the expected investment horizon.
@TI, I have posted 2 comments today, neither of which have appeared!
@Naeclue — Ack. Both now restored, thanks for commenting and flagging this up. I’m not sure what’s going on to be honest, as your comments didn’t even have links which are the usual trigger, and the system should know you in theory. 😐
p.s Your comment to @BBBobbins is a corker, what a tragedy if it had remained mired in spam.
@Naeclue — Oops, just realized both your comments were on this thread. So breaking my own preferences and replying twice in a thread in a row — please try to avoid this readers! 😉
Thanks for the further thoughts re: passive purists etc.
Re: the commenting editing, I hear you. To be honest there hasn’t been an overwhelming chorus of excitement about indefinite comment editing for members, so I am thinking I may turn that back off, partly for the reasons you mention.
My thinking was that old links and so forth could be updated, but perhaps that’s an edge case, versus, as you say, the danger of revisionism, which as I allude to in my article above was why I’ve held off with this for so long.
So perhaps I’ll extend the timer to 10 minutes and then close it for everyone. Will ponder over dinner. Thanks for the feedback!
BBBobbins. The problem is you can’t really predict anything beyond a few years. Even a decade is too far.
My spending has increased 8x over the last twenty years. Never would have predicted that. I’m now around 50 and can see another lurch higher once the kids are at uni in another 5y. Uni costs + wife with unlimited oops for holidays is a bad combo. Really though who knows.
Also want to transfer 70% of wealth over to kids before they are 30. No point them getting it later. So say 15y away. Not long enough horizon for big equities allocation.
End result is I much prefer to operate over shorter term horizon. Take it year by year. Not keen on SWR approach (or anything to do with modern portfolio theory). Prefer to use option theory putting path dependence front and centre.
@ZX I can understand all that and it seems reasonable. But surely there are multiple views that could be taken on time horizon with the kids? One view is to say the amount must be secure at t15. But other views might be you’d expect them to keep at least a chunk of what you pass on invested for their future benefit whether in SIPP/ISA etc. Thus the £ amount on the day you pass it on is largely irrelevant (save for any IHT that might catch them with an untimely demise).
I guess that might fall too far into the future and who is to say that they may not need the full £ amount in cash to fund property purchase so a conservative approach provides most optionality.
@BBBobbins. My two rules for inheritances are
a) transfer as much as possible when they are young enough to enjoy it. That means their 20s. Giving people money when they are 50 seems a bit pointless.
b) don’t prescribe what they can do with it. The point of an inheritance is to give them a totally unfair advantage in the game. Not to play the game for them.
I’m sure a component can be kept in equities. I keep 25% in cash equities on average. More if you incorporate the implicit delta on some of my hedge fund positions. I add even more via options. I just don’t want the downside risk with conventional assets. Don’t see any reason to accept 0.5 units of return per unit risk. That’s just crap. Frankly for me, I’ve found trading offers better risk-return than investment. Better diversification at the expense of higher complexity.
@BBBobbins & @ZXSpectrum48k #27-29: we can’t “predict anything beyond a few years” but, unless very fortunate, we still must plan 10-50 yrs ahead, depending on age. Almost everyone doesn’t start with the capital needed to FIRE (less still Fat FIRE); nor can access the skillset/hedging opportunities for uncorrelated trading returns. So we have to invest long term & conventionally. Necessarily, that typically means high allocations to equities. Yes, obviously ‘better’ strategies exist, but mere mortals just can’t access them. If I could invest in Simons’ Medallion Fund, then I’d be pulling every penny out of my S&S ISA, my bank acct’s and mortgaging the house to do so; as the returns of that Renaissance Tech fund are so consistently & uniquely other worldly. But I can’t. So that means thinking about the next 20, 30 yrs, staying invested in equities, and in the meantime being reconciled to being in the hands of the Market Gods. It’s the only option most of us have, realistically.
On inheritances, & prescribing what can be done, gifts with any reservation could fall foul of requirements of 7-year rule; so outright, unfettered gifts preferable from IHT perspective.