While President Trump became the third president in U.S. history to be impeached by the House, this has now brought the long drawn out process to a head with his eventual removal by the Senate highly unlikely. This together with the recent approval by the house of the USMCA as well as the agreement on the phase one trade deal between the United States and China lifts some of the uncertainty that has bedeviled the US market in recent weeks. Similarly, here in the UK, the recent election win by Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party with a comfortable margin will ensure a swift resolution of the Brexit issue, providing much needed certainty to the markets. While the share market and the pound surged after Johnson’s win, the pound has since eased on fears of a hard Brexit.

The major world markets as represented by the MSCI World Index and the S&P 500 continued their upward trend in December with these indices up by 2.89% and 2.86% respectively.  The UK, European and Asian markets were also stronger.  In the UK, the FTSE increased by 2.67% in local currency terms with the Small Cap Index the best performing of the UK indices, up by 5.88%. The AIM All Share Index increased by 4.34% while the Fledgling Index increased by only 2.55%. Our portfolio of investments performed much better than the overall market, increasing by 5.40% during the month which, after allowing for expenses resulted in a 5.07% improvement in the NAV.  We sold our holding in Chesnara, utilised the proceeds and some of our surplus cash to add to our position in Homeserve and Paypoint.  The cash takeover of Murgitroyd was completed at month end with cash now comprising 4.9% of the portfolio.