In December the Board of Alliance Trust (LON:ATST) announced plans to change its investment approach by appointing eight specialist equity managers with proven stock-picking skills. The new mandate is designed to improve the performance and is subject to a shareholder vote on 28th February. If the plans are approved the £3.1bn fund will give investors…
December saw the launch of a new closed-ended fund that will make secured, direct loans to small and medium sized companies that are mainly based in the UK. This part of the market is poorly served by the banks and other lenders, which means there is the potential to earn attractive risk-adjusted returns. RM Secured…
Looking back it is hard to believe that 2016 turned out the way it did. Even Mystic Meg would have struggled to predict Brexit and Trump and the impact they have had on the world’s financial markets. Forecasting is always a mug’s game, but analysing the recent performance and its influence on investor sentiment can…
Despite all the concerns about Brexit and Trexit, 2016 turned out to be a surprisingly good year for global stock markets with the Dow and the FTSE 100 starting 2017 at or near to all-time record highs. Some people see this as a really bullish sign, but those with a more cautious attitude might want…
Most investment trusts normally trade at a discount to their underlying Net Asset Value (NAV), but there are one or two where the manager is so highly regarded that the shares generally change hands at a premium. A prime example is the £860m Finsbury Growth & Income Trust (LON:FGT), which is managed by Lindsell Train.…
There are plenty of financial forecasts knocking around at this time of year, but the most entertaining are the 10 deliberately outrageous predictions from Saxo Bank. These are intended to flag up the outlier events with the most potential to move the markets. You can read them all here. The one that caught my eye…
Good morning Vietnam Adventurous investors who want to target countries with the highest growth potential might want to think about opening a position in Vietnam. This South-East Asian frontier market has largely been ignored as a source of investment returns, but it looks as though things are about to change as more people wake up…
Time to dust off the crystal ball It’s that time of year again when the experts stick their heads above the parapet and go public with their predictions for the year ahead. I have mixed views about these sorts of forecasts as it is easy to read too much into them, but if you approach…
Since the financial crisis of 2007-09 the banks have pulled back from some of their traditional lending activities and left a gap in the market that others have been able to take advantage of. A prime example is loans to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), with many of these organisations having to look elsewhere…
The fund manager sticking to his disciplined approach Neil Woodford is probably the best known fund manager of his generation – so when he left Invesco Perpetual in January 2014 to set up his own firm it created a massive dilemma for the company. They responded by appointing Mark Barnett as his replacement, and he…
