Good morning! It's Paul here, I'll be writing this week's reports.
Graham was scheduled to write today's report, but messaged me this morning, to ask if I could cover for him, as he's tired. Maybe he was up during the night to see the lunar eclipse? I got up at about 5am to see it, but couldn't see the moon at all - too much cloud, and background light. Pity. I studied astronomy at Uni, as my subsidiary subject, and found it fascinating. So have just bought a cheap plastic telescope, to rekindle my interest in the stars.
The vast scale of the universe means that there must be a very high probability of intelligent life existing elsewhere. Indeed, some astronomers believe that the universe could be teeming with life, but all a very long way away (too far for us to communicate with it, because by the time any alien signals reach us, they would be millions of years old). On the balance of probabilities, I think there must be life elsewhere, and I really hope we do discover extraterrestrial life forms in my lifetime. Providing they're friendly!
Markets
It seems to me that things might be turning bullish again. I'm certainly going back into buying mode, when companies put out positive updates, and providing the valuation is attractive (which many are, after savage recent falls).
My macro view, rightly or wrongly, is that the US-China trade problems seem to be getting resolved. I don't see any reason for a recession to happen. Real incomes are rising nicely in the UK, as wages rise (full employment) and inflation comes down.
As regards Brexit - it's not going to happen, is it? I don't think our politicians ever intended to actually implement Brexit. They just lied to us, in the hope that they could persuade us, over a couple of years, that it was a bad idea. The damage to our pseudo-democracy is going to be very serious, in my view. However, that's a topic for a Twitter rant, not for here.
Talking to many of my investor friends, most of them seem to be very nervous, and sitting on the sidelines in cash. That means that there's a wall of money to come back into the market, at some point. I want to be ahead of that wall of money, buying back into companies I like…
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