Freedom Calls: 20/4/26, “Performance sizzles... and Trump plays the long game in Hormuz”

From the team at Freedom Asset Management

Performance sizzles - like a well stocked barbecue, we all love a good ceasefire

A big boost to markets sees all our public market funds back in positive territory year to date.   In particular, USVIP was up c.10% on the week.  Over the last 10 days we have been building up on risk in our balanced fund OGF, taking us back to about 48% equities.  This will continue.

For all the thoughtful commentary we try to bring our readers each week, we never forget this business is about making our investors money.  The table below makes pleasant reading, and if you are thinking of allocating, don't worry you haven’t missed the window, it's just beginning again.

(For performance disclaimers, please see foot of email)

That being said, we should be prepared for some volatility over the next couple of weeks around what is happening in Hormuz and the proposed peace negotiations - and as I write this on Monday morning Hong Kong time, the US futures are pointing down.  But the markets have made very clear that the US wants this war to de-escalate, as does Iran.  They just need to find a way... and they will.

If only young men in Iran played rugby...

It was another sell-out year for the Rugby 7s in Hong Kong at the 55,000 seater Kai Tak stadium.  

Sport brings people together to play, to watch, to admire, to challenge and to dream.  If only young men in Iran had the opportunity to play rugby, then maybe they would be less keen to take up arms against their brothers in the region - and then we wouldn't be in quite such the mess we are in today.  In Europe, the Six Nations provides a regular opportunity for Scotland, France (and even Italy) to thrash England, and puts away any thoughts of crossing the northern border or the English Channel with guns and Irn-Bru, or garlic, respectively.

Pictured: Kai Tak stadium, Hong Kong, April 2026

Playing the long game in the Strait of Hormuz favours Trump

War is seldom won solely by men and machines - strategy matters today more than ever.

During the war, Iran developed the upper hand against the US by playing the "long game”.  Trump’s support at home for war was diminishing by the day, and Iran's adopted tactics of quasi-independent terrorist cells could keep the Gulf region under pressure longer than Trump could keep his domestic audience at bay.  

However, now that we have a ceasefire and a US naval blockade, the long game will be won by the Americans.  The US public does not really care about the Strait of Hormuz, so Trump is not really under any pressure to let up.  As of this morning the US proved their resolve by putting a hole in an Iranian ship trying to traverse the Strait.  

As we said last week, the US markets decided this war was over as soon as the ceasefire was agreed.  Iran needs the oil revenues to fund its war of terror; the US needs precious little from that part of the world.

We have also seen a fracturing of the Iranian side.  One minute "the Strait is open", another minute it is not, and the Iranian Foreign Minister is admonished for his use of social media.  Herein lies the problem in killing off successive layers of leadership in Iran.  We are definitely in Scenario 2 of our scenario analysis, it seems Scenario 1 was just too hard, especially with no help from Europe.

China’s support for Iran becomes a problem

A thoughtful article from James Drummond at AGBI suggests that China is in a bind with its support for Iran.  China has been purchasing cheap oil from Iran (c. 80% of Iran’s oil output, which makes up about 10% of China’s oil requirements) and has been selling the Iranians weapons that are now being used against the US.  It has been suggested that it was a Chinese manufactured portable shoulder-launched missile, a “Manpad”, that shot down the US F-15 fighter jet over Iran.  Interestingly, it was a friend formerly in the Swedish military who told me Manpads could easily take out a ship in the Strait from the shore, making “policing" the Strait almost impossible if you have hostile actors on the shoreline.

China’s economy needs thriving export markets in order to fix its well-known domestic challenges.  And if you are selling weapons to Iran that are being used to target important Chinese export or FDI markets, i.e. the US and the Gulf countries respectively - that creates an unintended problem.  And that problem is potentially far greater than whatever profit China is making from those arms sales, or benefit derived from using cheap oil.

If China were to pivot from its current stance, Iran would lose its most important financial backer.   Now there’s a thought.

Our articles this week cover a range of subjects:

Derek Akkiprik from our investment team in Abu Dhabi writes about what the US pulling out of NATO might look like in, “The US and NATO: Leaving without leaving?”

Canaccord’s Justin Oliver, Adviser to Opus Global Growth, summarises recent research from the IMF on “How wars affect economies"  

The team at 10,000 Days, advisers to US Technology VIP fund remind us that successful investing means ignoring the noise, in "Revolutionary technology always wins through the noise".

This week I am in Hong Kong and London, before ending up in Guernsey.  Next week, we have Cody Willard back in Europe travelling with the team.  If we haven’t scheduled something yet and you would like to meet, please let me know.

Our Abu Dhabi team is back working from the office today for the first time in weeks - so we look forward to seeing some familiar faces!

Wishing you another prosperous and peaceful week ahead!

Adrian

Co-Founder // Freedom Asset Management

Guernsey // Abu Dhabi // Hong Kong

M: +44 7781 40 1111 // M: +971 585 050 111 // M: +852 5205 5855

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“The US and NATO: Leaving without leaving?”, 20/4/26

By Derek Akkiprik

For over seven decades, NATO has rested on a simple premise: that the United States would remain its indispensable anchor. Today, that assumption is being tested, that is not necessarily by a formal withdrawal, but by something potentially just as consequential: a shift in how the U.S. chooses to engage with the alliance.

Recent rhetoric from Donald Trump has revived the possibility of a U.S. exit from NATO, or at least a meaningful downgrading of its role within it. While such statements are not new, the current backdrop gives them greater weight. The ongoing Iran conflict has sharpened Washington’s frustration with its allies, particularly around burden-sharing and operational support. From a U.S. perspective, there is a growing sense that NATO partners are willing to benefit from American security guarantees without consistently participating in higher-risk engagements.

This frustration builds on a longer-standing grievance. Successive U.S. administrations have criticized European members for underinvesting in defense, but Trump has taken a markedly more transactional approach; openly questioning the value of alliances that, in his view, do not deliver proportional returns. His broader geopolitical posture, including renewed pressure narratives around Greenland and even Canada, reinforces a worldview in which traditional alliances are not fixed commitments, but negotiable arrangements.

Yet, despite the rhetoric, a formal U.S. withdrawal from NATO remains unlikely in the near term. At the treaty level, exit is straightforward: Article 13 allows any member to leave one year after giving notice. In practice, however, the situation is far more complex. Domestic legal constraints, including congressional opposition to unilateral withdrawal, would likely turn any attempt into a prolonged constitutional and political contest rather than a clean break.

A more instructive precedent lies in France’s relationship with NATO under Charles de Gaulle. In 1966, France withdrew from NATO’s integrated military command while remaining a member of the alliance itself. At the time, the move was met with significant concern among NATO allies, particularly the United States and Western European partners, who viewed it as a challenge to alliance cohesion at the height of the Cold War. NATO headquarters were relocated from Paris to Brussels, and France’s decision introduced operational frictions, particularly around coordination and command integration.

However, the practical impact on France itself was more nuanced. Rather than isolating the country, the move reinforced its strategic autonomy, allowing Paris greater control over its military and nuclear deterrent. While France operated outside NATO’s core command structure for decades, it continued to cooperate with allies and remained committed to collective defense. Crucially, the decision did not “hold France back” in any meaningful economic or geopolitical sense. Instead, it positioned the country as a more independent actor within the Western alliance, albeit at the cost of reduced influence over NATO’s internal decision-making during that period. France only fully reintegrated into NATO’s military structures in 2009 under Nicolas Sarkozy.

Pictured: Then French President Sarkozy announcing France’s full reintegration into NATO, “responsibility for the nation’s strategic decisions means full commitment.”

This distinction is critical when considering the U.S. today. The most plausible risk is not that Washington formally exits NATO, but that it incrementally reshapes its role within it. This could take the form of reduced leadership in joint commands, a lighter forward military presence in Europe, or a more conditional interpretation of Article 5 obligations. Each step, taken individually, may appear manageable. Collectively, they would represent a structural shift in the alliance’s credibility and cohesion.

For European members, the implication is clear: the reliability of U.S. security guarantees can no longer be treated as immutable. For the U.S., the calculus is equally complex with balancing domestic political pressures, strategic priorities, and the long-term value of alliance-based deterrence.

NATO is unlikely to disappear. But as history has shown, it does not need to formally fracture to fundamentally change.

Derek Akkiprik

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“How wars effect economies - research from the IMF”, 20/4/26

By Canaccord’s Justin Oliver, Investment Adviser the Opus Global Growth Fund

Last week, the International Monetary Fund published its latest World Economic Outlook, drawing on decades of historical data to assess how wars affect economies.

The analysis shows that when conflict directly disrupts a country’s economic output, the resulting losses are both substantial and persistent, often exceeding those associated with financial crises or severe natural disasters. As importantly, the strength and durability of any recovery depends heavily on how lasting the subsequent peace proves to be.

Chapter 3, “The Macroeconomics of Conflicts and Recovery”, references Iran only briefly, yet its broader framework offers a useful lense through which to consider the potential global implications of the US-Iran conflict. Using post-war data spanning 1946 to 2024, the IMF highlights a consistent pattern: economic losses tend to deepen before stabilising, while recoveries hinge on sustained peace.

Importantly, the authors caution investors against reacting too quickly to ceasefire-driven market rallies, while also warning against pricing in worst-case outcomes that history does not support.  Geopolitical shocks, while disruptive, have typically been resolved over time, often creating opportunities for investors willing to maintain a longer-term perspective.

Three key points stand out:

The IMF’s analysis suggests that output in economies directly affected by conflict declines by around 3% at the onset, with cumulative losses reaching roughly 7% of GDP within five years. These losses can be exacerbated by overlapping crises such as banking or currency instability. However, this dynamic differs meaningfully for “belligerent” economies, those involved in conflict but not directly affected on their own territory, such as the US in this instance. Here, output effects are negative on average but not statistically significant, as the absence of physical destruction and an increase in defence spending can partially offset weaker demand. Even so, the scale of disruption through key trade channels, particularly those accounting for around 20% of global oil and similar volumes of LNG, remains an important consideration. Encouragingly, the IMF finds that even close trading partners tend to experience far smaller losses than economies at the centre of the conflict.

The historical record supports a case for patience. A negotiated outcome between the US and Iran cannot be ruled out, although the timeline and path remain uncertain. Recent high-level discussions in Islamabad, bringing together senior US and Iranian officials for the most direct engagement since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, highlight both the complexity and the potential for progress.  Economic pressures on both sides, from sanctions on Iran to the prospect of elevated oil prices for US consumers, create incentives to find common ground.  Drawing on 80 years of data, the IMF’s analysis suggests that investors are typically rewarded for looking beyond near-term uncertainty and focusing on eventual recovery.

The IMF outlines three potential scenarios. In the most favourable case, where the conflict subsides within weeks and oil averages $82 per barrel, global growth is projected at 3.1% in 2026.  A more adverse scenario, with oil prices remaining near $100 through year-end, sees growth slow to 2.5%. In a severe outcome, where disruptions extend into 2027 and oil prices remain well above $100, global growth falls to around 2.0% in both 2026 and 2027, approaching the IMF’s threshold for a global recession.  Notably, the US is relatively insulated in these projections. As IMF Chief Economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas observed, higher energy prices may even provide a marginal benefit. Accordingly, the IMF revised its 2026 US growth forecast only slightly, to 2.3% from 2.4% which is the smallest downgrade among major economies.

Taken together, the IMF’s findings advocate for a balanced interpretation of current risks.  While the economic consequences of conflict are undeniably severe for countries directly affected, the broader global spillover is typically more contained. Markets tend to overreact to geopolitical shocks in the short term, both on the downside and during relief rallies. Maintaining discipline, avoiding the temptation to chase headlines while also resisting overly pessimistic positioning, remains critical. History suggests that periods of uncertainty such as this often reward investors who stay focused on fundamentals and the longer-term trajectory of recovery.

Justin Oliver

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“Revolutionary technology always wins through the noise”

By the team at 10,000 Days, Investment Advisers to the US Technology VIP Fund

Managing money is not easy, whether you are doing it for yourself or others.  But perhaps one of the most important aspects of the job is filtering signal from noise.  99.999% of all information that crosses our screens on any given day is irrelevant noise; meaning it has no fundamental impact on our investments.  This is especially true if you are invested in Revolutionary Technology stocks, which are changing the world (by definition) and are often the least impacted by exogenous events.

Nevertheless, most investors, even tech investors, fail at separating noise from signal over the long term. Emotions are one cause, but it’s also because the “system” is rigged against them. The media – traditional, financial, and social – is the source of most of the “information” we absorb in a day, and that “information” is sensationalized and optimized for attention (views, clicks, hours spent), not accuracy.  Outside of the media, our “information” comes from analysts, other investors, and the companies themselves (not to mention politicians), all of which is inherently biased.

In short, there is no true “objective” source of truth from which we can distill reality. An FM radio is tuned to a specific frequency to find specific information. Unlike an FM radio, there is not a single frequency – i.e. source of truth – to which we can listen to understand what is really happening in the world.

We just lived through a historic week in the markets, and almost no one saw it coming. The Nasdaq was up 6.8% in a straight line and is now up 18.3% from its intraday low on March 30. This extremely strong performance shocked most investors, who were historically bearish because of the Iran war, inflation concerns, and the seemingly irrational behavior of our national leaders.

At the surface level, pretty much all of the recent information felt like signals.  Whether we're talking about the closure of the Strait of Hormuz (through which 25% of the world’s maritime oil flows), the potential for boots on the ground in Iran, Anthropic’s Mythos model (which supposedly can hack any computer system), all of it seemed extremely relevant. Those things were the cause of extreme consternation amongst investors, and yet, today the market is sitting at all time highs.

Does that mean that none of those things mattered? Of course not. But “mattered” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. They mattered for the Gulf, they mattered for American soldiers, Iranian people, politicians, the media, etc. But did they matter to Meta? Or Google? Did Instagram viewership collapse because Brent was at $119? Did Google searches go down because Trump threatened civilization? The answers are obvious.

The hard part is not that those things didn’t matter, but that they don’t really matter to the ongoing, long-term change resulting from technological progress. That’s a hard pill to swallow for most of us. When we see “civilization ending” tweets from the sitting U.S. president, it feels downright stupid to be optimistic. When we see gas prices above $4 in the U.S., it feels like recession is certain.

But as this last week showed us, knowing all of that information did not help us invest. If we could rewind to January 1, 2026 and somehow know everything that would happen between then and April 19, 2026, pretty much all of us would be bearish on equities. The Polymarket odds for “new all-time highs on the Nasdaq” would be less than 1%.

Everyone admires Warren Buffet, and we think probably the key to his success more than anything else was his ability to tune out noise. Humans, society, and the economy have this uncanny ability to be more resilient than anyone expects. Just look at the many incredibly horrible events of the last 126 years, and it’s remarkable that society exists at all. Two world wars, a global depression, unending civil unrest, a cold war between two nuclear nations, hyperinflation, oil embargoes, multiple presidential impeachments, horrific terrorist attacks, multiple financial crises, etc. As an investor in the year 1900, we can’t imagine that you would have been bullish on the next 126 years of human progress knowing all that would unfold.

This sounds flippant and perhaps even irresponsible.  And we can say with 100% confidence that there will be dozens of horrible things happening over the duration of my investing career, but unless we plan on retiring anytime soon, almost none of those macro things will matter to my ultimate wealth creation. The worst thing we could possibly do is to sell during one of those crashes because of fear.

That’s not to say that today’s world isn’t incredibly fragile, it is. The world is more connected today than ever, and any disruption of any part of this incredibly fragile system has the potential to derail the whole system. Maybe one of these events does end the world, but historically, betting on the end of the world has been a losing bet – and if it isn't a losing bet this time, the portfolio is the least of our problems.

Our job is to maintain perspective, and that means ignoring 99.999% of things that will happen over the coming years. That seems counterintuitive, as you would think you would want your money manager hyper-focused on every single piece of news; but that’s the opposite of what you really want. Even if you had a money manager that could perfectly predict future macro events, there is zero chance they could perfectly predict the near-term direction of the market along the way.

With the markets now back at all time highs, we can already predict what the next news cycle will look like: valuations, bubbles, tech-fueled optimism, etc. That’s nothing new. We aren’t trying to time bubbles and crashes. Our job is just to find the most Revolutionary technology companies changing the world, buy them at reasonable prices, and own them. We then have to spend our remaining time ignoring most everything else that comes our way.

Cody Willard and Bryce Smith

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Disclaimers

Performance table

Capital at risk.  Returns in US dollars unless otherwise stated. Source: * Estimates Freedom Asset Management as at 19/4/26. Please note depending upon how the funds are invested a small number of underlying funds can price 1-2 days after we take our estimates above so final published NAVs may vary.  Estimated GBP returns are from a $1.25 FX rate on 31/12/24 and $1.34 as at 31/12/25.  Please note launch dates of USVIP 12/2/25 and MINC 20/5/25. ** Note fund prices quarterly and includes 5% discount to NAV expressed as 5% performance above for 2024, note also that the 2025 estimate takes the MCAS December 2025 estimate and deducts the estimated charges of the Astro feeder fund. *** Morningstar as at 19/4/26, I shares for CIM Dividend Fund, F shares for PHC Global Value Fund.

General

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