#tom-hayes

#tom-hayes

This is a tough environment. It reminds me of the motto: Stay calm, stay positive, never give up. Conditions are not always perfect. There's noise, but you stay the course-you don't lose sight of what's important.

Launching a fund used to be a real test of endurance, with timelines often stretching across many months. The process demanded patience that many ambitious founders found difficult to sustain.

"This is a system shock," says Nigel Green, CEO of deVere Group. "You have a material energy supply disruption and a structural shift toward fragmentation."

QYLD has been running the covered call playbook on the Nasdaq-100 since December 2013, and with $8.3 billion in assets, it remains the dominant fund in this category. The strategy is straightforward: hold the Nasdaq-100 and sell covered call options against the entire index each month, collecting premium that gets distributed to shareholders as income.

U.S. financial markets experienced a volatile week, largely influenced by geopolitical developments in the Middle East and fluctuations in energy prices. Investor sentiment was driven primarily by external events rather than domestic fundamentals.

But you know what rarely gets the same attention? The quieter discipline that actually protects wealth: how and when experienced investors exit. Exit strategy starts before you enter Smart money doesn't leave loudly. There are no viral posts or panic-driven sell-offs. Capital is adjusted gradually, exposure is refined, and risk is reduced long before headlines turn negative. By the time public sentiment shifts, the most disciplined investors are already positioned.

The battle for WBD played out amid a pivotal backdrop for Wall Street: a period investment banks hope will mark a full-throated M&A rebound, in which just landing a role on a deal of this size is as useful for one's street cred as actually winning it. Even advisers on the losing side will walk away with hefty fees, boardroom credibility, and proof they belong on the biggest mandates of the coming year.

Private equity firms operating in the UK face a uniquely complex accounting landscape. Between fund structures, special purpose vehicles (SPVs), regulatory requirements and investor reporting, financial management can quickly become overwhelming. For many firms, legacy systems and spreadsheets are no longer sufficient to support the level of accuracy, transparency and efficiency required. As a result, an increasing number of UK firms are turning to dedicated private equity accounting software to simplify fund and SPV accounting while improving control and compliance.

Hedge funds and other money managers spent $2.8 billion on alternative data in 2025, according to a new report from consultancy Neudata, a 17% jump from the year before. It's more than double what asset managers spent on alternative data in 2021, which includes a wide range of non-traditional information sources. The report projects that the total spend on alternative datasets could jump to more than $23 billion in the consultancy's bull case in 2030 and just under $8 billion in the bear case.

The lack of appetite for UK smaller companies and an "on-again, off-again" approach to tax reform has been a toxic combination for AIM. Hargeave Hale, like most AIM VCTs, hasn't escaped the damage, losing investors 39.5% over five years. The big question for VCT investors though is not what's gone before, but what the future holds. The decline in AIM valuations has left the VCT with an exceptionally well diversified, and by VCT standards remarkably low risk, portfolio.

Under chief executive Georges Elhedery, who took the helm in 2024, the bank targeted $1.5 billion (1.1 billion) in annual cost reductions by 2026. However, HSBC revealed on Wednesday it now expects to achieve this by the end of June – six months ahead of schedule.

The VIX index, often referred to as Wall Street's "fear gauge," rose by 23%, indicating a sharp uptick in investor anxiety and concerns about market stability. A higher VIX suggests that investors anticipate potential volatility and seek protection against market downturns.