Before the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-9 when banks enjoyed rising profits and employees’ their bonuses gained through complex derivatives trading, more relaxed lending practices and expanded balance sheets. Barclay’s Bank PLC created an advert starring the famous British/Welsh Actor Sir Anthony Hopkins. Sir Antony, or rather his script, encouraged potential customers ‘to be a big deal clincher’ adding disdainfully ‘who wants to be a little deal clincher’ such were the tone of the times, the advert wished striving go-getters to join Barclays and avoid such a pitiful calamity by becoming part of something big and powerful. With the hope that it would provide lucrative banking fees for them. Nevertheless, Barclays still exists today in comparison with many institutions that failed during the crisis.
As Sir Antony suggests- the big deal clincher is recognisably someone who creates the best or most valuable deals- but who would be a little deal clincher? It infers being small in value, status, or stature. More so what does one need to know and do, if indeed, the term really refers to most people, as opposed to those few employed in the world’s largest financial institutions, with how to react to political, social, or economic events going on in the world that effects people’s liberty and livelihoods.
In the postmodern age, much is considered relative or someone’s personal version of the truth where they can call themself either big or little both in stature and in business. Whether others agree is a mere difference of opinion. In contrast, according to Yahoo Finance in 2022 the UK’s 100 largest listed companies comprised in the FTSE100 Index, the average CEO earned £3.6m. Whilst, the UK Government’s January 2023 average house price index, aggregated across all types of property in England, was £310,159. This clearly highlights that for most people their biggest investment in their life is a few months’ work for those considered the big deal clinchers and that is just in the UK, try the US for size. With that in mind I decided that someone like me is a little deal clincher.
When I started
I bought my first long-only equities after the stock market crash of October 1987 and began building a small portfolio (what is considered small is the debatable point). During the nineteen nineties along with an early career in construction I experienced the ups and downs of the Tech-Media-Telecom bubble among others to test my nerve. In the early 2000’s my wife and I started a niche retail business located in Edinburgh where I also built my interest in equities from a side-line hobby into a sustainable investment vehicle for our family’s current and future financial needs. I preferred to engage a stockbroker and not a trading platform. I continued with the long-only equity strategy and added venture capital investing too.
Even after the Great Financial Crisis, a global pandemic, and the rise of online retailing our niche retail sector positioning and stoic efforts helped us survive and thrive, although COVID was a tense time indeed in both financial markets and fashion retailing. Post-pandemic 2020 I brought in a wealth manager to help with the portfolio, although still I managed a portion of long-only equities. They have added a fund-of-funds vehicle with a balanced multi-asset approach to reduce risk and manage the downside better as opposed to a higher risk long-equities approach. The venture capital aspect has been reduced to own investments only as VC or angel investing is the highest of high risk with any gains given over to cover disappointments. More positively, my own involvement in a forestry partnership has been an excellent investment since 2011 and still ongoing. I remain looking for another smaller scale owner managed opportunity.
A more thoughtful view
As my investing interests grew reading and researching companies, economics and political events became part of this process. Writing a blog developed from the knowledge gained and I posted my first Little Deal Clincher blog in December 2011 along with further educating myself in the humanities. I also enrolled in the Open University in the UK and over the next decade attained a Batchelor and Master of Arts Open degree studying fields as diverse as World Archaeology, Religion, History of Art, and Philosophy where I added a further Master of Arts in Philosophy by September 2022. The dissertation from the MA on complicity is both posted on the blog and published in a booklet.
Therefore, I shall be posting content which reflects the fluctuations of financial markets, particularly equities but mindful of the power of the bond market and currencies especially the US Federal Reserve and the dollar. This combined with commentary on political and socio-cultural developments that effect everyday business and personal choices and freedoms. The blog is aimed in the main at self-employed people who live and operate outside the hierarchies of large organisations. Nevertheless, it should appeal to those who engage in commercial life or enjoy debating the challenges of modern living with a view to events past, present, and future possibilities.
I express my own views and I am not promoting any party political or economic policies. I shall make references when appropriate to source material and will make note if currently holding any investments mentioned personally. I never advocate following any of my investment comments without doing your own research, taking appropriate advice, and making your own decisions. Please note I do not intend to offend reader’s sensibilities with my views if they do not align with your own point-of-view. Readers are welcome to leave a comment via the contact section, expressing their support or disapproval, using common social courtesies, to making an advancement to the debate in question.
The Little Deal Clincher