Jeremy Clarkson’s transformation into the face of farming has been remarkable. Clarkson’s Farm is by far and away Amazon Prime’s biggest UK success story.

The super smart studio execs at Amazon Prime must despair of the UK market.

They plough money into big budget fantasy/action/sci-fi blockbusters, and all the Brits want to do is watch a driving journalist fail to plough a field. Or get hit in the privates by his own goats. Or stare, uncomprehending, at Gerald!

This renewed focus on farming might just come at the right time for the UK.

In the Second World War, when these posters were everywhere… 

… the UK imported 55 million tonnes of food a year, almost entirely by sea. With German attacks on shipping, and capacity also needed for other bulk goods, food self-sufficiency was massively encouraged.

Today, while there aren’t U-boat wolf-packs in the Atlantic, supply chains are becoming an issue again, as the world deals with the impacts of, in rapid succession, Covid, the closure of the Suez Canal, Ukraine, tariffs, and rising tension in the Middle East.

And when it comes to food independence, the UK doesn’t stack up too well:

Self-sustaining = green, not self-sustaining = red

Source: 7IM/https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-025-01173-4#MOESM1

·        We’re only self-sustaining in two of the seven major food groups.

·        France is covered in four of seven (Jeremy won’t like that).

·        China, despite having about a billion more people than the US, is better off.

·        It’s only Guyana, in the whole world, that can support itself …

So what’s the solution? British farming is part of it – as is high intensity agricultural-tech (you might remember we talked about the super-productive greenhouses in Thanet a couple of years ago).

And, of course, there’s doing it yourself. By the middle of the Second World War, over 1.4 million families had allotments and were digging for victory. There are only about 300,000 allotments in use today…

We’re trying to do our bit – Ben Kumar and Chris Justham are having a chilli and tomato growing contest this summer. Results (and chilli sauce tasting) to follow.

Source: 7IM https://www.7im.co.uk/ 

© 2025, 7IM. All rights reserved. 

Something historic happened in 1776.

Nope, sorry Hamilton, not the Declaration of Independence.

In South Yorkshire, in September, a horse race took place for the first time: the St Leger Stakes.

For those of a certain class in 19^th century Britain, summer began at the start of May at Newmarket racecourse, and ended at Doncaster with the St Leger. That meant doing business in the summer could be tough.

Which gave rise to an investing adage which you still hear today:

“Sell in May and go away, come back on St Leger Day” *

It suggests that investing through the quieter summer months is pointless, or damaging.

Is it true though?

Before we look at the data, just consider what the “strategy” suggests. That every year, at the same time period, it makes sense to be uninvested for four and a bit months…

Seems unlikely…

So, the stats.

If you’d sold the FTSE 100 at the end of every April, and bought it back the Monday after the St Leger race for the last 20 years… you’d be about 100% worse off.

If you break it down to the annual returns, you can see the two problems.

First, being out of the market for more than a third of the year. In bad years it looks great – like in 2008, below. But in good years, like 2009, you miss out on a huge chunk of return-earning time.

Second, the idea that summers are bad times for markets. Wasn’t really true in the 1800s, and definitely isn’t now. Sitting out of the market in summer 2020 meant missing a chunk of the bounceback – turning a bad year into a horrible one.

It can be tempting to look for rules and shortcuts in investing (and in horse-racing, if the novels of Dick Francis are any guide…).

But just because it rhymes, doesn’t mean it’s worth doing…

See you next week!

* In recent history, that’s been shortened to simply “sell in May and go away”, probably because Hamilton’s descendents over the pond don’t have much of a concept of St Leger, or indeed, South Yorkshire.

Source: Factset/7IM. Total returns, past performance is not a guide to future returns

Original content produced by 7IM – https://www.7im.co.uk/