How I invest: The accountant going all-in on just three stocks
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13 August 2026
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Diversifying your portfolio and transferring it into less risky assets, like bonds, is the usual advice for a 76-year-old starting to look at retirement.
And Joe acknowledges this, aware that typically, you’d opt to spread your risk. “I don’t do it that way. I’ve got just three shares... I couldn’t advise anyone else to do what I do,” he says.
This doesn’t tell the whole story, the accountant has around £3 million in other assets as well and £400,000 in short-dated gilts, which he is keeping separate from these equity investments
Joe, or ‘glass fish’ as his wife calls him, a pet name awarded after purchasing a memento which his spouse dislikes on a trip to Venice, also has around £275,000 split across three stocks: S4 Capital, RIT Capital Partners and Diageo.
This money is what Joe calls his “play inheritance”. With seven children and three grandchildren already “it needs to go a long way”, he jokes.
He explains that all his wealth, including his non-equity holdings, will be passed along at some point.
A plan for supercharged gains from stocks
His plan with the equities? To push his money as hard as he can for the next 10 years and “not touch it at all” hoping it’ll go up at least three times in value over the next six years.
His ‘comfortable’ return-loss scale? To make “at least 50%” on the investments, and “at most, lose 20%”.
Before going into why he likes these three stocks, Joe explains his personal investment rules.
First, he’s aware of the risks. Going all in on equities in any portfolio would be graded as high risk since equities rank at the top of the asset risk ladder, coming in ahead of bonds and cash.
This is why they offer the potential for higher returns, although there’s no guarantee, even for Joe who is confident in his picks.
They’re also riskier because if a company goes bust, the shareholders are the last to get paid out, if there’s any money left at all. All of that goes to the banks and bond holders to pay off the debt first, as Joe well knows.
Having worked as a professional accountant for the past 57 years, Joe has seen his fair share of good and bad companies up close.
This has given him a practical knowledge base which he uses when picking his investments. His “principles” as Joe calls them, are: “I back people, because it’s always the people that do well”, adding that what unites the individuals behind all three of his picks is that they’re “people who make things happen...and they think really strongly about the money side”.
That brings him to the other area of focus, cash and specifically “how much that business can generate”.
S4 Capital
When it comes to S4 Capital, Joe says he invested because of its founder and CEO, Martin Sorrell.
“I think he’s terrific,” Joe says, “I think he just understands markets, and he understands the future as much as anybody can understand the future. Yeah. He understands finances because he was a finance director previously”, referring to his time at Saatchi & Saatchi from 1977 to 1984.
S4 Capital is a digital-first advertising, marketing, and technology services company and takes up 50% of Joe’s equity allocation.
Sorrell frequently argues that AI should benefit S4 more than legacy ad groups. However, investors remain divided on whether artificial intelligence will expand demand for S4’s services or commoditise parts of its business.
On the numbers and money side, S4’s net revenue was down almost £150 million in Q1 this year and client spending on technology was down 10%.
Over the past 12 months, its share price has increased almost 63%, according to MarketWatch data, but over five years it’s down 95%.
RIT Capital Partners
Moving onto RIT Capital Partners, which was Joe’s initial buy when he started with this ‘all in on equities’ strategy eight years ago, the people that drew him into it were the founding Rothschild family, who remain the largest shareholder today.
A publicly traded investment trust, Joe said the family behind it “while a different generation running it now, I just think they’ve been so solid, sensible and reliable”, adding that he feels ‘safe’ having his money with them.
A non-member of the Rothschild family, Maggie Fanari, was brought in as CEO four years ago, and Joe was also full of praise for her.
“She’s great... she’s got a lot of access to a lot of different things”, Joe adds, in a nod to SpaceX, which the trust had a small stake in pre-IPO. Their ability to invest in unlisted stocks was appealing to Joe. “I think they’ve got some terrific stuff,” he says.
Over the past year, the trust has returned more than 30%, besting the broader global equity market, with the broad MSCI All-Country World Index chalking up 24%. But over five years its performance has lagged, making just 7.4% versus 74% for this benchmark.
The trust is currently trading on a near 20% discount, which Joe thinks is “ridiculous” and is down to the fact that it does own unlisted assets.
The company has launched several measures to try and tackle the discount, including a £300 million tender offer at a 15% discount and a continued share buyback policy.
Diageo
Joe’s final investment is alcoholic drinks maker Diageo, which owns Guinness, Jonnie Walker and Don Julio.
The company has struggled over the past year, with a drop in its spirits sales in North America in particular proving to be a sticky issue. This has collided with a broader social trend of people drinking less, either from Gen X’s ‘sober curious’ outlook and the rise of weight loss drugs inhibiting people’s desires to drink all putting a bit of a dampener on the company.
Diageo’s share price is down almost 20% since this time last year, and down 55% over five years.
Recently appointed CEO and turnaround specialist Dave Lewis’ plan to get Diageo’s sales back on track is to move away from focusing purely on premium brands and moving towards a more balanced approach that includes mass-market affordability.
Joe, however, likes the company because “it’s not going to be overtaken by technology” unlike a large number of other companies he thinks run that risk.
“It generates lots of cash and it’s run now by a really good chap Dave Lewis... he’s only been there a short time and you just look at the things that he’s doing and I just think yeah if I was doing his job that’s exactly what I would do,” Joe adds, joking that Lewis could probably sort out the UK’s public finances if given the chance to.
The mistake Joe admits he made
While being incredibly bullish, both in his outlook and risk profile, Joe is aware that he’s not always got everything right.
His largest regret is not about the stocks he bought but the ones he sold, failing to run his winners for long enough.
Conduit Holdings, Quilter, Costain, Lloyds and Barclays were all trades Joe did well on but “if I could have just sat on my hands more then I’d have made even more... so I’ve learned when you buy something, don’t sell it”.
Eve Maddock-Jones: Funds and Investment Trust Writer
Eve joined AJ Bell in 2026 as a funds and investment trust writer. She was previously editor at Investment Week, reporting on all major retail investor news, covering funds and investment trusts, ETFs and regulation...
