ROYAL RARITIES

By Simon Hunter

The acclaimed writer will make the Prado his centre of activity and ‘contempla-

PAINTINGS, tapestries, sculptures, decorative art pieces, armour and weapons, and royal furniture collected by Spanish monarchs will be put on show at a new museum. It opens at Madrid’s Royal Palace on June 28 and will feature collections dating back as far as the Middle

The inaugural exhibition will feature 650 of the more than 150,000 pieces managed on behalf of the government by Patrimonio Nacional, including works by Velazquez, Goya, Caravaggio, Titian and Tintoretto.

In a joint venture with the Loewe Foundation, it is inviting internationally renowned writers to engage literarily with the museum’s collections. tion’. This summer. He will write a story related to his time at the Prado, the first of a story collection that the Museum will dedicate to exploring the potential for creative expression at the crossroads of fiction and the visual arts.

JM Coetzee, born in South Africa in 1940, has published nineteen works.

He is regarded as one of the most acclaimed and decorated English language authors.

Much of his work questions apartheid, under which he grew up, and challenges all forms of racism.

He now lives in Australia, where he is a Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide.

He’s also had visiting appointments over a long academic career, at US universities such as Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford.

Why

The newly discovered dinosaur has been identified from a partial skeleton – the right upper jawbone, one tooth, and five vertebrae.

Managers

If you have placed your pensions, savings and investments with a financial adviser there is a strong possibility you are invested in a model portfolio service (MPS) whereby you delegate the execution of an agreed investment strategy to an investment house.

The 60/40 model portfolio, which consists of 60% equities and 40% bonds, has been a popular and successful investment strategy for well for over 50 years.

A combination of growth and income providing a safe way for investors to grow their investments without taking excessive risk.

However, in recent years, experts have questioned whether these models can continue to deliver risk adjusted positive returns moving forward. The criticism centres around a lack of diversification to mitigate risk.

because shares and bonds were negatively correlated delivering a diversification effect. The equity element performing well in good times with safer assets like bonds appreciating in value and providing a yield during bad times.

Keeping interest rates artificially anchored at zero has destroyed that inverse relationship. In recent years equities and bonds have become more positively correlated resulting in both asset classes moving in the same direction more often which has made these portfolios more susceptible to market downturns.

Equities and bonds have become more positively correlated

There have only been a handful of occasions in 100 years, generally considered as ‘Blackswan Events,’ (abandonment of the gold standard and World War II) where bond prices haven’t gone up in value when equity prices have fallen.

Interestingly, the current macro-economic environment is frighteningly similar to stagflation in the 1970’s; where the strategy also proved ineffective!

The 60/40 model worked well in the past

In conclusion, while the 60/40 model portfolio may have been a reliable investment strategy in the past, its relevance in today’s market is being questioned.

As a result, you may need to explore alternative investment strategies to achieve your investment objectives. An actively managed portfolio which invests in a broader range of asset classes may offer potential benefits and may be worth considering for investors seeking better returns and more effective risk management in a debt ridden, slow growth, inflationary environment.

If your investments have produced a negative return in 2022 please take the opportunity to book a second opinion consultation.

Taxi hailed

SAN JAVIER council has replaced the grounded Mar Menor ferry service with a fleet of water taxis.

For reasons unknown, the popular ferry between Santiago de la Ribera and the Tomas Maestre port at the north of La Manga ceased operation in December.

That’s despite the operator, Mar Menor Ferry, qualifying for a €75,000 per annum subsidy from San Javier council.

Transport councillor, Antonio Martinez Torrecillas, said the latest subsidy had not been paid and added the service stoppage was down to ‘an internal problem within the company’.

The three replacement water taxis will begin operating from June with a capacity to carry 12 people in each of them - well down on the 70 travellers that could be accommodated on the ferry. The councillor said they would run more frequently than the ferry and operate between 10am and 10pm, but no timetable has been declared nor details of fares, which were €5 for the ferry.