Cluster Family Office Blog

Perhaps the terms that have been most popular since this blog began are Financos e Back-to-front legs. It seems to me that both of them (and all of us) are in some way responsible for the situation our economy has reached.

Without going any further, the abuse of RF securitisations has led us to the current credit crisis. But the abuse of structured and over-structured derivative products has also led more than a few people into financial gambling addiction. What’s more, there is the aggravating factor that whilst a gambling addict may ban themselves from entering bingo halls and casinos, they will never manage to prevent themselves from entering a financial institution with flashy, eye-catching signs that tempt them into the worst possible behaviour.

In my view, the responsibility is entirely shared. Just as trash TV can only thrive if there is both supply and demand. In other words, media «professionals» who stoop to such levels, and also a demand from viewers with little brainpower who consume this rubbish.

Anyway, I’ll leave you with the original post from a year ago, where there were already signs of some sort of impending crisis:

Financiers and investors. An explosive mix.

«Money is a very peculiar thing. It brings a man as much joy as love, and as much anguish as death.»

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006)

I know you won’t be impressed by the economic figures I’m about to mention. They are real, publicly available figures to which our minds have become accustomed very quickly. The constant stream of negative figures released every day has desensitised us to their significance, but each one has not only significance but also macroeconomic repercussions that ultimately affect our personal finances.

Let’s not forget that at the end of the economic chain are people, and that these figures ultimately translate into individual well-being or hardship. Money, work, income, expenditure… everything is affected in one way or another, sooner or later, by those economic figures that are constantly being thrown at us, and which have been dreadful for the past few months. Globalisation in communications means we see detailed and immediate images of natural disasters on the other side of the planet, but they are still local phenomena about which globalisation merely informs us. But globalisation in economics It not only informs us but also affects us directly. Getting used to hearing and reading about negative economic figures and desensitising ourselves, as if we were watching a report on a flood in a remote country on the three o’clock news, will not spare us from being personally affected.

In May 2008, applications for mortgage foreclosures in the US rose by 48% compared with the same month in 2007. If we also take into account official notices of default, 261,255 households have failed to meet their mortgage obligations – that is, almost one in every thousand inhabitants of the world’s leading economic power. Over the last 29 months, the year-on-year figure for mortgage repossessions has risen consistently. Specifically, this past month, 1 in every 483 households nationwide has had their home repossessed, but there are states such as Nevada where the proportion is 1 in every 118 households. California and Arizona are also suffering the terrible hangover of repossessions following the mortgage binge of the past eight years.

Another shocking figure: in Spain, 10% of mortgages exceed the value of the properties they secure. I don’t know about you, but it really got me thinking, especially when you consider that many outdated valuations are simply ignored, which It’s not in anyone’s interests to update.

Those whose homes have been repossessed, or are about to be, not only lose a greater or lesser portion of the property that was already theirs to the bank, but also see how the oil crisis is having a devastating effect on their finances. Had this energy crisis occurred earlier, they would have saved on a few mortgage instalments, further worsening the balance sheets of their creditor banks. In other words, the rise in prices will mean that many will no longer be able to meet their loan repayments, leading to more and more repossessions.
At this stage, whilst the fall in interest rates in the US is so vital to safeguarding the financial system, moderating the rise in energy prices is even more so, if that is possible. Crude oil at 150, 200 or 250 US$ per barrel will render the extremely costly measures adopted by The Fed, the ECB and others many central banks. Interest rate cuts, injections of liquidity into the system… all of this will be swept away by the economic and energy crisis and the resulting first-round inflation. The G8 He had already warned of this danger last Saturday with unusually aggressive comments.

The oil dystopia has pushed out of the headlines the credit crunch, but both crises coexist, overlapping in time and space. And this coexistence of two such serious scenarios is unprecedented, historic and harrowing. Furthermore, there are knock-on effects arising from these crises that make the outlook even bleaker, such as the shameful food crisis in the Third World, caused by the sudden overproduction of biofuel, which is also spreading dangerously to the Second World.

Some people did not realise the seriousness of the situation until the last January, when the stock market experienced a brief period of volatility. But as it was nothing more than a «coitus interruptus»and some people still, rather clumsily, associate the word «crash» exclusively with the one in 1929, many followed (Some people even still believe) that if the stock markets don’t crash, it must be because things aren’t actually that bad.

The economic cycles have disappeared, and the new global economic order still seems chaotic to us. Complete chaos which we will come to understand in time. This crisis is so unprecedented and historic that not even a traditional stock market crash can guide us through the current situation. We have been saying since last summer that today’s economy will feature in the economics textbooks of future generations. But we are already on the path to a doctoral thesis.

The other day, a regional director at a well-known Spanish private bank said to me: «The only reason the stock markets are rising is that there is no reason at all«… A pithy statement if ever there was one, especially coming from someone in his position. This crisis is…’ The Big One, no doubt. Perhaps re-reading my colleague GFO’s article might give us some insight «Inflate or Die».

To finish off, I’ll leave you with an extract from the comment he made Manuelmad (I’m sorry, but I don’t know where to link you to) our article by Mad Max, and with which I wholeheartedly agree:

«I may well be living in a world of joy, but I prefer to think that the years ahead of me will be the years of the greatest technological and cultural development in all of history, precisely because of the crisis that is bearing down on us.’.
I recently read an article about the ‘Singapore miracle’ – a country that had nothing and which, until very recently, was a land of mosquitoes and disease. The reporter asked a businessman how they had managed it; the answer was that scarcity breeds efficiency, and efficiency breeds wealth.
»Moments like these are the ones that shape the course of world events. Whether they are for better or for worse depends on the perspective from which each person views them.’

As he said Victor Hugo:

«The future has many names. For the weak, it is the unattainable. For the fearful, it is the unknown. For the brave, it is opportunity.«

The evidence has now convinced even the most optimistic observers, and it is no longer a matter of debate that the era of cheap energy is well and truly over. At least for the next generation. The three conditions necessary for the collapse have now come to pass:

1. A historic rise in energy demand in emerging economies such as China, India, etc.
2. Decline in oil production due to depletion.
3. The lack of sufficiently advanced and widespread alternative energy solutions.

As for the first factor, it is obvious that the main player is China, with 1,300,000,000 people whose government has embarked on this path of state capitalism. Their growing demand has only just begun, and if India follows in their footsteps even slightly, the planet will have to meet the energy needs of a further 1,000,000,000 people. The figures for these emerging economies are so overwhelming that the West and its vanity are left looking powerless and pitiful.

The second factor is perhaps the most worrying, and yet the one that has been most predictable. The zenith or peak oil (although many have seen it as a box-office high) is a evidence for almost 10 years now. But we have stubbornly refused to pay any attention to it until the price per barrel has risen 2.5-fold over the last year and a half. And we say it was predictable because we have seen it rise tenfold over the last decade, as all the expert opinions were all pointing towards the end of the era of cheap oil.

It should be borne in mind that current prices make it possible to exploit fields where extraction costs previously exceeded the required rate of return. But in most of the large, long-established traditional fields, crude oil no longer flows as freely as it once did. Extracting the second half of a field’s reserves is much more costly and slow – very slow indeed. The crude becomes much thicker and must be pumped, and the difficulties multiply. The picture is therefore very different in a young well in a young field, where the liquid gold gushes forth with vigour and barrels flow freely and ceaselessly. The large, traditional deposits are now producing at a snail’s pace, yielding little and at high cost, and despite technical advances, production costs and volumes will never return to what they once were. Just like life itself…

It is true that today’s offshore platforms bear no resemblance to those of a decade ago; today, drilling reaches depths of up to 3,000 metres, whereas in the past, drilling beyond 300 metres was considered a risky operation. Furthermore, the precision of the surveys and, above all, of the drilling operations (carried out at a pre-determined angle and in a pre-determined area with an accuracy of just a couple of metres) means that extraction is much more precise. But the depletion of resources is inevitable and we must to go in search of new cheese, with new flavours that will surprise us, as the well-known fable goes.

The third factor in this perfect storm has a great deal to do with human behaviour. Foresight and long-term planning are virtually non-existent when it comes to humanity as a whole. Not even politicians tend to anticipate problems beyond their own terms of office, and in most parts of the world there is scarcely a political class to speak of. Alternative energy sources are still in their infancy and cannot yet serve as a viable alternative to our dependence on liquid fuel. We will only strive to achieve alternative solutions when they are not alternatives but mandatory measures. Sadly, with a few exceptions, this is how the human race behaves on a global scale.

With the price of a barrel exceeding 140 $, we begin to feel the pinch. Transport is affected; protests, strikes and so on begin. Any palliative fiscal measures that European governments might take will be nothing more than a stopgap. At least not until a decision is taken to generate alternative energy on a massive scale, and to achieve this, the problem must be made a matter of national importance and drastic strategic measures must be taken. Let us hope it is only a matter of time before we set out resolutely on this path, but the sad truth is that we will only do so when the price per barrel becomes sufficiently suffocating.

The world’s poorest people are already suffering the consequences of the sudden, burgeoning production of biofuel, which is driving up the price of the raw materials that form the basis of their diet. A despicable and shameful famine. But there is also the danger that dependence on exorbitantly expensive oil will persist long enough for the damage to the world’s economies to become too severe. The current uncertainty centres on whether we will manage to switch to alternative energy sources in time, before suffering a genuine economic collapse that would be almost impossible to reverse. If not, the energy deficit will prove unbearable for the fundamentals of the world’s major economies, and the consequences of this deterioration could trigger the worst global recession in history. The following chart shows the prediction of certain doomsayers, whose views we are, however, far from sharing:

Personally, I firmly believe that we will be able to preserve these fundamentals and that the First World’s need and instinct for survival (the Third World, unfortunately, cannot do any more) will lead us to find a viable alternative to accompany the multiple crises, hardships and other restrictive measures.

I remember a certain well-known, short-sighted economic analyst who, at the height of the credit crisis last August, said off the record something along the lines of: «The credit crisis is the worst in history. What else could possibly be worse for the global economy? The oil crisis is an old familiar foe whose consequences are entirely predictable»… They’ll never learn, my dear and much-admired Nassim, they’ll never learn.

Saudi Arabia continues to «reassure» us with its now-familiar line that «there will be oil for everyone», but I was taught to be wary of anyone who claims to have a good hand but refuses to show it; perhaps the good hand is for the Saudis, or perhaps not even that. If information is power, it is clear that the West is very vulnerable in the face of uncertainty over actual oil reserves. And yet the transition to a new energy model is dangerously far from becoming a strategic matter of state. Meanwhile, other short-sighted people are up in arms because a Spanish electricity company might be bought out by another European one «for strategic reasons». Come on, politicians: ‘Strategy’ is written with a capital S. But as I was taught to take personal responsibility for everything that happens, all of us living in the developed world share responsibility for having elected our leaders.

«We must not lose faith in humanity, which is like the ocean: it is not tainted just because some of its drops are dirty.»

Mahatma Gandhi.

Let’s hope that Mad Max doesn’t cease to be science fiction and become a mere caricature of reality dystopian.

Continuing with our healthy habit of looking back and re-reading some of our articles, today we’re looking at the strategic mistakes made by most small and medium-sized portfolios, contrasting them with the guidelines generally followed by the HNWI, that is to say, large, well-managed estates.

As is As part of our mission on this blog, we aim to convey and adapt these strategies to what we might call Medium o Low Net Worth Individuals. As a point of interest, we can revisit the reflections we made a year ago regarding the property market and the misuse of this type of investment. It is also regrettable to see how the RV which served as a safe haven for many investors who had lost confidence in property as a sound asset.

Here’s our original post from a year ago:

Strategic mistakes in small and mid-caps. The four variable assets.

We have received an anonymous comment to our article Citisoluciones, the Networking in the service of CitiBank. Rest in peace the financial independence of Kiyosaki. The fact that we are publishing it does not mean that we subscribe to all of its content, but it seems to us to be as raw as it is sadly sincere, and we think it deserves to be read in full and in the form of a post. We have transcribed it exactly as the author wrote it, without changing a single comma:

Anonymous friend, in our article of more than a year ago we said that it was a decent job like any other, but the company is unethical with its customers and also with its employees as you have described very well. It plays with the yearning to achieve financial independence which is much closer in the reading of Kiyosaki, The fact that it is a simple book, despite the fact that it is a simple book, than in that work activity. Especially for potential customers. It is a pity that the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad has lent (sold) himself to such a game. It dishonours him and harms third parties.

A pyramidal and pseudo-sectarian structure that hunts and captures the circle of influence of the largest number of followers. Unfortunately, far from the demanding formation of a commercial network and far from the search for the well-being of their clients that they so proclaim.

I just want, anonymous friend, to give you lots and lots of encouragement. Without our mistakes we couldn't improve, and I'm sure that without your disappointing passage through Citisoluciones, you would not have written such a sincere, sad and at the same time honestly grateful text. With your foresight, honesty and effort, have no doubt that time will put you in the place you deserve. That's how it usually does with everyone, for better and for worse.

I am sure your comment is appreciated by many.

P.S. Anonymous, please write us a e-mail contact details, We would be delighted to count you among our partners.

This question is particularly relevant in light of what we’ve been coming across in our meetings with new clients.

It is very important to ask yourself this question. Is your money working for you? For your bank? For your tax adviser? For your solicitor? For your estate agent?

When one listens to pearls like the one in the video below, one realises that the truly important concepts and reflections are common to most of the people in the world. elected who have succeeded in one way or another in life. I am not referring to financial success but to personal success, even though they often go hand in hand, and do not always form a positive conjunction. There are a number of wise thoughts and reflections that are revealingly common in those who can feel fully proud at the end of their lives. Those who have clearly contributed to making the world better to a greater or lesser extent or whose passage through this life has not been sterile. In short, those whom for one reason or another we admire and would like to be able to emulate. But these reflections should also be common to mere mortals who will not go down in history, but who strive to reach the end of our lives with the satisfaction of feeling fully proud of our passage through this world.

Among these concepts and reflections we find wisdom, spirituality, ethics, intelligence, humility, courage, ideals, justice and a long etcetera of vital virtues, without which our existence will at best be anonymous, inconsequential, grey, vulgar and useless, if not harmful.

For our part, we humbly wanted many of these virtues to be taken into account by our clients when designing their future. Interestingly enough, just as Steve Jobs , one of the many reflections that we always like to do with our new clients before we prepare a new project. Global Wealth Plan is: What changes would you have to make in your life if you were diagnosed with a serious illness and your time was suddenly running out? The answers we come across are very diverse, but they always involve extremely fruitful reflections. We should not wait until the end of our life to put it in order. And hiring a family office is the right time to make these and many other changes that are not always directly related to optimising our investments.

As you will see in Steve Jobs' video, this reflection on the end of life has also helped him to analyse and relativise what is truly important in this world. Although it may come as a surprise, when we talk about managing and structuring more or less important assets, the consequences of contemplating or ignoring these reflections are very noticeable. For better and for worse. And we can assure you that when a Client's personal size allows him to value these concepts and reflections that we propose to him when designing his PGR, the results in terms of wealth progression and Happiness are spectacular. The pursuit of Happiness in parallel but also beyond the increase of our fortune, is something very enriching at all levels. As we have said before:

Paradoxically, when the focus is on the enjoyment of the journey, you tend to get on the podium, and the happiness achieved is far greater than the mere medal.

Losing sight of these vital concepts and reflections when dealing with money and wealth is one of the greatest dangers we can incur. Optimising the returns on our assets will produce money, but also a myriad of problems that will lead to unhappiness if we ignore what is really important in Life. On the other hand, if we have properly assessed these concepts, wealth progression in a wise living environment will be much more likely and easier to optimise. This is the basis of Cluster effect positive.

Here is the version of Mr. Jobs' speech that I found more than a year ago at Gurusblog thanks to Investorsconundrum, It is in its entirety and subtitled in Spanish. However, Steve Jobs' speech opened the 2005 academic year at the university:

If you are interested in this kind of reflections, which in my opinion are what distinguish the interesting people who pass through this world from the rest of the crowd, I also recommend you to read another pearl, this time from here: The Seven Powers, of Àlex Rovira. Finally, I leave you with the selection of the Top 20 must-reads for «the journey of life», according to this same author, a true Guru of Happiness. An interesting library if ever there was one:

1. Man's search for meaning. Victor Frankl.
2. The man who planted trees. Jean Giono.
3. Philosophical dictionary. André Comte-Sponville
4. Siddhartha. Hermann Hesse.
5. Leaves of Grass. Walt Whitman.
6. The wheel of life. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.
7. Grace and courage. Ken Wilber.
8. The freedom to be. Annie Marquier
9. The art of loving. Erich Fromm.
10. The scripts we live by. Claude M. Steiner.
11. I am that. Sri Nisargadatta Maharah.
12. Who I am - the sacred quest. Jean Klein.
13. The Dance of Reality. Alejandro Jodorowsky.
14. The Little Prince. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
15. The Act of Will. Roberto Assagioli.
16. The prayer of the frog. Anthony de Mello.
17. The wisdom of insecurity. Alan Watts.
18. Integral psychology. Ken Wilber.
19. Bhagavad Gita.
20. I Ching.

The supreme wisdom is to have dreams big enough not to lose sight of them while pursuing them.
William Faulkner.

These are difficult times for investors. And this is a warning sign of the social impoverishment that lies ahead (we warned you already a year ago). When investing becomes particularly difficult and financial instruments are unusually volatile, the market price of the property prices in free fall Due to a massive increase in supply, and at a time when traditional economic cycles are being distorted to the point of disappearing, there are clear signs that we are on the brink of an economic crisis that will have a devastating impact on businesses and their jobs.

Although it is clear that this crisis has been affecting investors for months, its impact on ordinary people in the developed world has not yet been fully felt; nevertheless, it is already knocking on the doors of millions of people. Unfortunately, in the developing and underdeveloped world pouring down on the flooded area, because the need for alternative biofuels is causing a famine that should concern us infinitely more than UBS’s accounting problems, to give a stupid and shameful example.

Just like the pessimism about the property market It hinders the healthy growth of our wealth; the nomadic practice of parking money in bank deposits, scraping together tenths of a percentage point above the Euribor – here today, there tomorrow – does nothing to promote the sound, planned growth of our cash. However, compared to strategies that focus solely on rising share prices and the short term – which have made thousands upon thousands of investors rich in recent years – those entrenched in savings accounts will form the elite of those who knew how to exit the market in time and will be envied for weathering the winter without losses until the stock market spring returns (although the Japanese have been waiting for it for 18 years). But there is an opportunity cost, and in times of crisis it tends to be high.

In short, both the Pessimism in the property market such as the Financial Absenteeism represent a dangerous shift in the healthy growth of our wealth, which we must safeguard throughout our lives and in any economic climate. Some of you might say that avoiding losses that would severely erode our wealth is an achievement in these times. Of course, it is a lesser evil and, for many, a pipe dream, but we should only be content with avoiding a decline in our wealth if we are unable to maintain steady progress with reasonable guarantees of success, whether on our own or with help. Furthermore, success in achieving such steady progress will depend entirely on the PGR designed and based on the unique characteristics of the individual or family.

Here we must make it clear that financial success should not be defined solely in terms of maximising financial returns. Wealth and happiness are concepts that we must address together, as the former often poses a serious threat to the latter, as we can see from the following chart:

«A concert is not merely a performance of an album, but a theatrical event»

Freddie Mercury

Similarly, we can say that managing our wealth is not merely a matter of applying economic principles to our investments, but rather the perfect harmony between Happiness and Wealth throughout our lives and those of our descendants.

But returning to the steady growth of our assets and the show that must go on, we must not simply resign ourselves to a change of scenery. What we must do is adapt to it. Like the mouse in search of new cheese. Financial inaction can cost us irreplaceable opportunities, in terms of both quality and quantity, when it comes to our wealth. And, at best, we only have one lifetime in which to grow it.

We do not intend to encourage anyone to venture into investments whose risk is beyond their means or for which they are not suitably qualified. Far from it. We simply wish to share with you all the criteria and guidelines we work by as a Family Office. This is the path we believe to be the right one, and one that our clients follow with our guidance. And this is what we wish to explain and share on this blog for small and medium-sized investors. How each individual applies this will depend on whether or not they share our criteria and protocols, on their individual capabilities and training, and on whether or not they wish to receive our support.

We can hardly hope to reach a safe harbour if we do not know the right course. Only by understanding our objectives and limitations can we focus our efforts on trying to overcome winds y tides, such as the current credit and energy crises. Some will succeed. But without clarifying the route, the destination and our level of self-sufficiency, the chances are nil.

It’s a constant theme. Almost all the feedback we receive from people with average wealth (<12m €) y pequeños (entre o,5 3m es su desmoralización por la sobrecarga de inmuebles que sufren. apenas unas decenas o pocas centenas miles euros en efectivo el resto patrimonio ladrillo pagado incluso hipotecado parcialmente. esto hace se sientan atrapados sin salida. las causas les han llevado a esta situación son diversas no vamos juzgarlas absoluto. todos, acertadamente no, tuvieron mejor intención hacer crecer patrimonio. lo tanto deben perder tiempo energías culpabilizándose ello, pero sí aprender los errores cometidos grabarlos sus memorias indeleblemente. en este perfil potenciales clientes, obstante hemos detectado conductas ciertamente muy desaconsejables. inmensa mayoría ellos desisten poder convertir dinero ante del mercado inmobiliario. reflexión más menos viene ser siguiente:

«My property is worth far more than what I would be offered for it at the moment. In other words, I won’t be able to sell it at that price until the crisis is over, and so I have no choice but to wait for the property market to recover to normal levels.».

No doubt many readers will recognise themselves in this pithy phrase. And we say ‘pithy’ because it could perfectly adorn the tomb of their wealth growth. Our longest-standing clients enjoy a very balanced mix of property and cash, tailored to their needs and PGR. However (or before this is implemented), we are going to try to correct certain conceptual and strategic errors via this blog, just as we do personally with new clients who come to our family office with this property burden:

1. Firstly, our properties are not worth more than what the market is willing to pay us today by them. This is the market price, and no other price we might have moored in our memory (just like the anchor effect (as defined by Fernan2 in the stock market). We may also be misled by the mental anchor we may hold onto regarding the expected capital gain at the time of purchase. This universal law of market price, determined by supply and demand, is particularly difficult to accept when it comes to our own property, especially when it accounts for virtually our entire wealth. But even if we are reluctant to accept it, the market continues to dictate its universal laws.
2. Secondly, whilst it is obvious that the market was overvalued, we must be aware that it may be many years before it becomes so again. The bursting of a bubble does not necessarily mean that another will immediately begin to form, and it is even less likely that it will do so in the same sector. The level we consider «normal» (sic) may be a long way from the value the market is likely to assign to our properties in the coming years or decades.
3. Thirdly, the growth of our wealth cannot be put on hold and allowed to suffer until the next property bubble has inflated enough for us to feel that our properties are being bought up by others «at its usual price«. We must not let a long and precious period of time and opportunities slip away, so that we can free up our assets and put them towards other investments.”.

The potential realised profit or loss that we will incur if we decide to sell our properties today at current market prices must be fully offset and more than made up for by the returns we will obtain from other investments made with the proceeds of those sales. And this capitalisation on opportunities, much like compound interest, will prove spectacular by the time our properties have regained a market value that we consider «normal». Therefore, the state of our assets at that future point in time when we deem it acceptable to sell our properties would be far worse than what we would have achieved by selling today at market prices and putting our assets to work during those same years.

The show must go on (lyrics). Our assets must continue to perform well, without the long and severe property slump derailing our progress for years to come. As is always the case – and as we never tire of repeating – times of change, crisis, bursting bubbles, and so on… always come with the best investment opportunities. And we must be able to identify and capitalise on them, either on our own or with professional help. But in order to make the most of them, we must at the same time resolve to accept the market price for our properties so that we can begin the road to recovery. This path will be multifaceted and complex, and the worst mistake we can make in terms of building our wealth is to rule out selling, give up and fall into a pessimism about the property market which, let’s not kid ourselves, would be a very a long and fruitless penance.

Here’s one of the most moving posthumous videos from Freddie Mercury. Who better than him to remind us that the show must go on. That our wealth must continue to grow and that we must make the most of the opportunities that arise, despite the distress caused by past and present mistakes. If, to achieve this, we need to convert some or all of our property into cash at market prices, then we must do so. Let us think of the profits we can make with that money and not allow ourselves to be blinded by the capital losses we will incur. The opportunity cost The cost of resigning ourselves to a loss in the property market by pricing our properties well above market value is, without a doubt, far greater than any capital losses we might incur by adjusting our prices to match current demand.

To quote Henry Ford once again: Failure is a great opportunity to start again, but this time more wisely. Today it’ll be the bursting of the property bubble, tomorrow a stock market crash, the day after that hyperinflation with oil at 200$, or deflation itself… We will always have excuses for resignation and defeatism, for cowardly condemning ourselves to investment ostracism. But our wealth growth must continue despite the difficulties, and this is absolutely incompatible with the pessimism about the property market which prevails in our time.

The show must go on
I’ll face it with a grin
I’ll never give in
Let the show go on