Updated for me too. Thanks Adam and everyone else. I'm happy to wait a few hours for updates as healthy as that one....

All changed now so all is well.

Heh heh!

I've just gone in - no problems....

To wrap this up: BIG thanks to @Nik-Burrows for helping kick Quai/IM into sorting things, the task is complete Note to selves - we will do our sums earlier next year to avoid stress, & hopefully the process will be slick with everyone having learned something!

In a blog post today Meta Platforms (META) has increased the investment for its data centre campus in El Paso, Texas, to $10B from $1.5B. They aren't playing.

Vertex have a good track record. We can't ever expect anything more that 'could, might, maybe'. It's still a drug trial. Nothing is certain until it's approved and commercialised. Vertex specialise in what is called Transformative therapies. Drugs which transform the pathway of a disease from mere managing symptoms to a long term cure/outcome. It's nice to know we invest in something that improves peoples quality of like. More specifically Vertex focus on genetic diseases (gene editing) In terms of success from drug trials. At phase 1 statistically, the odds of success sit at 10-15%. At the conclusion of a successful phase 3 trial-and the results were not just positive, they were extremely positive, the odds increase to 85-90% so I am confident they are onto something. There are many more drugs in their pipeline-Diabetes is the next potential break-through

Try this [image: 1773073791510-screenshot-2026-03-09-at-16.29.26.png]

@Adam-Kay said in Tech changes: OT-the US just reported 4% growth in gdp. The biggest cut to the deficit in 10 years. Remind me what direction UK GDP is going in? We really are screwed in this country, aren't we.

A shame you can’t ’back-date’ your ISA contributions, but at least a reminder to fill them now & moving forwards

It's a pretty consistent pattern of late. Strong intra quarter and sell the news. The bottom line is the MSFT result was solid, circa 20% growth. I'm happy enough. The tech portfolio so far today is weathering the bumps well imo. And we sit at an all time high so a bit of volatility is manageable . Unlike some tech portfolios I know which are getting thumped One other thing-quality always comes back!

Anyone who holds a portfolio and has questions can contact either myself and or Nik. Many have. Discussions around suitability are very individual specific due to goals, age, risk appetite and time to retirement/time to draw down.

Hi Ollie, I don't follow 'Defence' stocks generally as they rely on wars being waged. My area is growth/tech which has outperformed defence over any meaningful time frame. If you want to seek out defence funds there are a couple of global ETFs you can google.

@n5tew Good morning, to answer your questions, yes there are a handful of lenders that still offer offset mortgages, though they’re relatively niche now. With these, you only pay interest on your mortgage minus what’s in a linked savings account, which can significantly reduce your interest costs if you hold a large savings balance. There are indeed fixed rate products although they will tend to be notably higher than your conventional fixed rate products. If you would like to discuss this in further detail, please let me know, my email is michael.searle@cobens.co.uk, or we can arrange a meeting to dive into specifics.

@mikeiow I'm in a similar boat. Too much time on my hands and with a few pennies to spend at the bookies (I mean stock market). I used a spredsheet to come up with the chart, but couldn't produce anything other than dots on a scatter chart. There were no labels next to each dot, other than their value. I, also, couldn't produce the curves on the same chart. @Adam-Kay thanks for the steer. I'll do some googling at SD and beta.

Hi R, Yes it's a display gremlin. Ive notified admin to fix it. Ive looked at the Switch and that has been processed. Being two legs to the transaction , one out and one in the DB shows one but not the other. Regards Adam

Ok thanks.