MoneyWeek Wealth Report 2026

Investment writers are always at risk of hyperbole, so it is always tempting to begin by saying that these are exceptionally uncertain times for growing and keeping wealth. Yet look back over the last century or so and one has to admit this is not true – there have been many eras that were far more perilous.

Instead, it is more probably accurate to say that conditions are becoming more uncertain after an extremely long spell in which the world became unusually safe in many respects. The 1980s marked the beginning of an unprecedently good patch for capitalism and financial markets. There were upsets along the way – the crash of 1987, the dotcom bust in 2000 – but these were blips within a long-term trend in which economics, politics and geopolitics kept us on an improving course.

This began to shift in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, when the tensions that had been building up started to become apparent, but the lessons were not learned in time. From the middle of the 2010s onwards, conditions clearly began to shift. The pivotal year was 2016, with a series of global events – including Brexit, the election of Donald Trump as US president and Xi Jinping starting to consolidate power with a more aggressive vision for China’s role in the world.

Since then, turmoil has piled up, including a pandemic whose social impact is still being felt, rising concern about the impact of artificial intelligence, and wars in Ukraine and now the Middle East. So far, stockmarkets have continued to shrug all of this off and set new highs, but one cannot assume this state of affairs will continue. MoneyWeek’s long-standing view is that a more volatile world will sooner or later mean more volatile markets.

This is the backdrop to our wealth supplement, in which we focus on ideas and services to help readers who have built up wealth to maintain it and pass it on. We are grateful to all our contributors and interviewees for putting it together.

Highlights include: a look at how to mitigate the impact of recent inheritance tax changes; interviews with Caledonia Investments, Majedie Investments and RIT Capital Partners on how they look after wealth for future generations of their founding families; and some thoughts on the issue of passing on digital assets.

We hope you find it useful.

~ Cris Sholto Heaton