In ’real life’ I’ve had a good (albeit quite stressful) year so far. However, in the worlds of geopolitics and investing, 2022 seems likely to go down in the record books as a pretty terrible year, as the extent of the self-inflicted damage from the lunacy that has prevailed for the past couple of years has begun to reveal itself. Oh yeah, and Russia decided to start a war in Europe. For the US stock markets it was the worst first half since 1970. This seems appropriate as the high inflation, rising interest environment has felt reminiscent of the 70s. My portfolio has has its worse ever first half too – down almost 25% (though it has since recovered 5%-odd over the last couple of weeks).