January 2015

Dear Client,

A Happy New Year from all at Argyle

It is often said that change is the only permanent thing in life and this is certainly true of the economic and political changes which confront us on an almost daily basis.

The European Central Bank has announced an open-ended programme of Quantitative Easing (printing new money) of 60 billion Euros a month which is much higher than anticipated and which has not pleased the German Government at all.

Greece has elected Alexis Tsipras who leads Syriza, the Anti-Austerity party, which has promised to make real changes to reduce the hardship brought about by the austerity measures imposed by the EU.

At the time of writing, we have not been able to form any judgement of the likely effect of these dramatic events but the changes in asset allocation we made to your investments recently to safeguard against such challenges are having the positive effect we had hoped for and despite the ongoing extreme volatility of World Stockmarkets we are encouraged by the growth being seen in your portfolio.

We anticipate more of the same from the markets during 2015 and we will be doing our best to make sure that your money is working hard for you with minimal risk.

Checking Your Portfolio Valuations

Your Portfolio Valuation is updated once a day on the Transact website (accessed via our own site) and we realise that many clients like to keep themselves regularly up to date on the progress of their investments. If you're not currently doing so, but would like some guidance on how, please get in touch.

Discontinued 0845 telephone Number

We will shortly be discontinuing our 0845 telephone number as BT have advised that we also have to display our standard (supporting) telephone number... so it seems simpler to just use that number instead, which is 01442 842538.

Staying with the subject of IT based communication, you might like to know that we are currently in the process of re-formatting our website to enable optimum presentation on handheld devices such as smart phones and tablets, as well as the traditional computer of course.

Finally, we are only a couple of months away from the implementation of major changes to how pensions can be accessed and should you have any questions on that subject, please do not hesitate to get in touch... we are always available to discuss your options.

Contact us using Skype

Please remember, we encourage you to pick-up the phone (or Skype us) if you would like to discuss any matters further.