How long can the good times roll?

published 19 December 2019

Boris Johnson final election speech, London, UK - 11 Dec 2019 — Britain will definitely be leaving the EU in 2020

Regular readers will know I have a tendency to look for the downside in most investment situations. But from an investor's point of view, it's very hard to be anything other than deeply relieved about last week's general election result. Regardless of who you voted for, you have to accept that the outcome delivers on the thing that markets crave more than anything else some certainty.

We now know that the UK isn't about to embark on a campaign of wholesale renationalisation. We now know that most voters aren't naive enough to look at a seemingly endless list of electoral bribes and simple solutions to complicated problems without wondering about the credibility of those making the promises. And we now know that whatever else happens, Britain will leave the European Union (EU), thus showing that our democracy is not broken as many have claimed in the last few years, but in fact working pretty much as it is supposed to ie, facilitating change in power structures without the need for violent revolution.

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That said, don't bring too much of your money home too many investors have too much cash invested in their own country and if you do stick to the UK then you'll miss out on the opportunity to invest in some of the fantastic ideas dished up by our regular contributors in this week's magazine. Our editor, Andrew, reckons Poland is looking good. Our columnist Mike takes a closer look at biotechnology. Crislooks at Singaporean real estate, while Richard checks out a cheap global consumer goods company and that'sjust a handful of the ideas they've comeup with.

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John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.