Rothschild Private Wealth: Focusing on real value
Helen Watson, CEO, UK Wealth Management
In today's complex and sometimes frenetic world, we often try and create a sense of order by putting our ideas and experiences into separate mental boxes. In our heads, we compartmentalise our lives into different categories, often unconsciously.
Financial Times journalist Gillian Tett called this tendency “the silo effect”. In an enlightening book of that name, she explored how mind-forged silos help us cope with complexity but can also lead to blind spots that mean we miss opportunities.
This silo effect can influence how some think about investments. We often focus on share prices and whether they have gone “up” or “down”, and forget that behind this share price there is a business with customers, employees, assets and liabilities - a business that is hopefully generating a growing earnings stream some of which may be returned to us through dividend payments.
In the shorter term there are many factors that can influence the share price but, over the long term, it is the underlying business performance that counts. In this letter, we have tried to explain how we break down these silos to think more like business owners and the advantages that we believe this brings.
I hope you find this Quarterly Letter enjoyable and illuminating and thanks, as always, for your continued support.
Download the Quarterly Letter - July 2018 (PDF 531 KB)