We advise clients on what to do with their finances. Just as importantly, also tell them what NOT to do.
There is so much financial nonsense out there designed to take advantage of our emotions, namely fear vs greed and Fear Of Missing Out.
This nonsense takes many forms; the media desperate to fill ‘column inches’ and sell advertising, illegal scams, fake news, ideas built on fresh air and hope to perfectly legal but downright terrible investments.
In this short video I explain our force field that shields you from this nonsense and protects you from “The Dark Side” of the financial world. If you have any concerns about anything financial, just ask!
Links to the programmes I mention:
ITV drama “Vanishing Act”
BBC Radio 4 ‘File on 4’ farce / tragedy “The Wolf of Crypto”
For a transcript of the video, keep reading:
In this video, I’m going to tell you about the Chatfield force field which is a metaphorical protective shield to help clients. Now it’s important that we help clients with what to do for please just as important we improve clients was not to do because there is an awful lot of nonsense out there.
And I bet everybody has had some of these text messages; Mum, I’ve lost my phone or Royal Mail Delivery failed and there was a fake tweet here from Elon Musk allegedly and people fell for this in their 1000s to do with Bitcoin.
And you may have seen this drama Vanishing Act on ITV before Christmas. It’s based on true story of a lady in Sydney pretending she was a financial adviser. She wasn’t regulated and registered with any Australian authorities, she was just running a giant Ponzi scheme and ripped off all her friends and family and stole A$40 million.
Chatfield is here to protect you against this kind of thing. The rules and regulations in place, frankly, our own moral compass, as well. And if you’ve got any questions, you’ve just got to ask us whether something is any good, if it looks too good to be true, but just don’t be afraid of asking.
Closer to home there is a story in a little village down south in near Slough based at a pub called The Potters Arms in Winchmore Hill. One of the regulars in the pub was this guy, James Gale, who ran a pest control business but also dabbled in cryptocurrency, got his fingers burn, lost £200,000, so decided to set up his own cryptocurrency as a safe way to get people to invest. The landlord or the local pub was the first investor, other people piled in and they had cryptocurrency nights at the pub as well. He set up this currency here called Koda, their offices with his Lamborghini outside and, guess what, the whole thing fell like a pack of cards.
But before then James Gale had such a high profile and he was on a Channel 4 documentary but last year, Companies House struck him off. He claimed he was running the company in Dubai, but people lost their life savings on this one person killed themselves. It’s just a terrible, terrible, tragic story. And again, just if you see something like this and you’re feeling you’re getting sucked in, just pick up the phone, ask Adrian or me. We will quickly tell you if something is any good and quickly get underneath these kinds of things. Because this guy here, James Gale, you can see from Companies House, he didn’t find a single document with them. The whole thing was just nonsense.
Radio 4 did a programme on him last summer and there’s a link to that in my covering email if you want to listen to it for half an hour.
I think what we’re talking about here is risk. This is all about fear and greed and fear of missing out. Hat tip to Andy Hart here who explains risk in a different way. And the bedrock of the portfolios we put together for you are the lowest risk. Global equities are the lowest risk portfolio you can have spread far and wide. They have delivered and what’s the highest risk on his scale is what’s working now. Because what works now is dangerous. It always changes. Always has done always will do and the banks, the big investment providers, they’ve got huge marketing departments to pull people into what’s working now.
Now here’s an example of what’s working now and how it could go badly wrong and the funds that fell from hero to zero last year. There are five funds here all run by well-known investment providers Bank of New York, M&G, UBS, and they were right at the top of the rankings in 2022 and they are near enough exactly the bottom of the rankings in 2023.
It doesn’t have to be a scam, doesn’t have to be cryptocurrency, these are genuine investments that you can put your money into, but Chatfield is here to protect you from this kind of thing as well. Like I said, there’s a lot of nonsense out there.
Speaking of nonsense at the end of every calendar year, you get the following year’s predictions. This was from various Wall Street banks at the end of 2022, what’s going to happen in 2023 for the S&P 500 which at the time was at 3,853. Predictions all the way from 4,500 to 3,400. What happened? The market went to 4,769, which was an increase of 23.7% in dollar terms. Nobody predicted that nobody on this page has got a clue. I mean, you may as well have just asked Mystic Meg what’s going to happen. This is nonsense. Ignore it. We don’t get pulled into this kind of thing and you shouldn’t either. We’re here to protect you from this kind of thing. If you’ve got any questions like say, just ask.
So here’s Chatfield’s forcefield. We’re here to protect you because what’s on the other side of this is what we call “The Dark Side”. And the dark side is very powerful, it just wants your money. There’s marketing. It’s slick. It knows what to do. It just wants to pull you in all of those investment ideas, it’s fear and greed writ large and fear of missing out.
I don’t know if this is apocryphal, whether it’s actually happened or not, Jeff Bezos had a conversation with Warren Buffett. Jeff says, Warren, “your investment strategy is so simple. Why doesn’t everyone just copy you?” To which Warren Buffett says “nobody wants to get rich slowly”. That’s the problem with all these scams, all of these investment tips all of this marketing is built on the fear and greed of getting rich quickly. It’s the laws of nature and you can’t beat nature.
This is what you should be focusing on instead, day by day, just like the weather things change for decades. The investment markets have improved, they have performed they have delivered, be patient and stick with it. This is where you should be. I’ve shown this slide before, the 50 biggest companies in the world most, of these are household names. This is where you should be investing and enjoying the fruits of these companies and not dabbling in what’s working now because that’s dangerous.
So like I said, if you have any questions just pick up the phone, don’t be afraid of asking if anything that comes across your viruses it looks too good to be true. Don’t worry about it. Just ask and get our opinion on it rather than regret what you might do afterwards.
