The unaudited NAV of Athelney Trust rose by a satisfactory 3.7 per cent in the month of February. With the New York markets hitting a new high last week, we are all wondering just how long this upward swing, christened the Trump Reflation Trade, can possibly last. To give you my conclusion first, I now believe that market ratings for blue-chips are looking rather stretched but there is more to go for in small caps although it would be idle to pretend that there are no substantial risks. Much will depend on announcements about tax reforms and monetary policy where it is quite possible that Janet Yellen, no lover of President Trump, might seek to push up rates faster than we have bargained for. On foreign policy, Trump’s tweet might be worse than his, er, bite but protectionism is almost certain to draw retaliatory measures which would be bad for growth in major exporting countries like Japan, South Korea and Germany.

The problem is that Messrs’ Dimson, Marsh and Staunton of the London Business School, masters of the statistic, have provided convincing evidence that low real interest rates mean low future returns on world-wide equities and bonds. Their estimate for the long-term return on equities is only about 5 per cent per annum but I trust that the return on a portfolio of small caps would be comfortably better than this.