It’s always been my plan to return to London at some stage and to make it my base. It’s not only that I want to be close to the Royal Opera House – it’s also that I’d like to live somewhere where English is the predominant language, where there are English bookshops, and where I know what I’m looking at in butcher’s shops.

If I’m asked when this might happen, I always say five years, and I’ve been saying this for twenty years at least. In fact, I’ve no good reason to return to live in the UK. I love Prague and I live happily there, even if I’ve been too lazy to learn the language. I can be in London in about five hours, door to door, and I still get to the Opera House from time to time. I also love my work, which must be based in Prague, and now that M&S foodstuffs are sold in Wenceslas Square, I even know what I’m cooking and eating. So I have no plan to retire. Last, but not entirely least, the tax regime of the Czech Republic is more generous than Britain’s. Five years still sounds about right.

But I’ve been saving up for a London flat in the belief that one day I’ll buy one and live in it. As I save, prices rise. The inner boroughs of the city are still beyond my means (I want two bedrooms, a garden, lots of wall space for the paintings I’ve bought in Prague, and room (a room?) for the grand piano).

So, most of my savings are on the stock market, chasing the rising value of property. And yesterday was a bad day, so I’m probably now looking at NE99 not NW1.

But of course, it’s up and down all the time, and you can’t afford to worry about it. What amuses me, though, is the predicament of the stockbroker. I don’t doubt that they know a lot about investments, and I do believe that it’s more than witchcraft when they grill you about your financial plans and appetite for risk and then craft a particular portfolio to suit your needs. But about what might happen a day, a week, a month, a quarter or a year from now, it seems to me they have no special knowledge. They promise a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but you can’t ask them where that end can be found.

Stockbrokers are in a difficult position because they can’t control the day to day. So they do a defensive dance with careful words when you ask them anything particular about their expectations for your investments. What they’re saying, in reality, is what you read in the small print at the bottom of any advertisement for financial products – the value of your investments may fall as well as rise, etc. They are anxious to please, anxious that you should stay the course, above all anxious that you should not blame them for not knowing the immediate future. And I do not.

A week ago I read a very pessimistic article by a Telegraph journalist predicting imminent disaster, so I sent it to my stockbroker for her comments. Now, I’ve been happy with my stockbroker. She writes to me in plausible language. But we all know that whilst in the long term stock markets are a good investment, in the short term or medium term their level is unpredictable.

What’s amusing is how careful they must be in what they say.

I think we have to be very careful with how we are led by the media and while I’m not dismissing the issues out there, it’s also important to look at the reasons for staying the course, being true to your objectives, regularly rebalancing to ensure no one asset class gets out of sync etc. Otherwise we can react to short term trends rather than sticking with our long term, strategic plan.

Which is to say, long term I will be fine. But how long is the long term? I want that flat in London – NW1.

And then things started to go very wrong and staying the course suddenly didn’t look like the best strategy after all.

To which, my stockbroker’s response, putting a very brave face on things, is BUY MORE! Her company issued another careful note:

Share prices have suffered a sharp correction in the last few weeks, albeit after many stock markets reached all-time highs in the spring. Valuations are around the average for the last twenty years, so the current weakness offers a good entry point.

BUY MORE!

Anyway, the value of my portfolio doesn’t make the slightest difference to how I live, so it doesn’t really matter to me now. As for the future, a flat in the outer suburbs of Sheffield might yet have some appeal.