Here’s an experiment for you to try. Ask 10 random people on the street if they’ve heard of ‘Global Switch’ (www.globalswitch.com) and you’ll likely be confronted with a vacant expression. You may well find a similar response if you mention ‘Anaplan’ (www.anaplan.com). Yet both are ‘unicorns’, an expression in the tech arena to describe a company…
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of investment strategies in existence which proclaim to be the best for maximising returns. From broad policies such as value or growth investing, to more quirky approaches such as astronomical cyclical analysis, investors are spoilt for choice when it comes to selecting a set of rules or procedures on…
As my colleague John Kingham recently wrote in the March edition of Master Investor Magazine, “high yield stocks do not always deliver the yield you were hoping for.” This refers to the dreaded “yield trap”, whereby companies which have seemingly large dividends relative to their share price then go on to disappoint investors by cutting…
According to finance theory there are three components to the total return which an investor can make from a share. Firstly, we have dividends. Often being the most modest source of equity returns, dividends can nevertheless be consistent and provide a useful source of income for investors. Those with shares in dividend paying FTSE 100…
As I discussed in last month’s edition of Master Investor Magazine, AIM shares had a good year in 2016, with the FTSE AIM All Share Index rising by an impressive 14.2%. However, investors who got involved in AIM’s new issues did even better – although the two sets of performance statistics aren’t comparable directly due…
My first blog on Football & Economics, published just over two years ago, discussed how billions of pounds, euros and dollars have been poured into the beautiful game over the past few years. A number of recent reports and statistics have demonstrated that there are few signs of this trend reversing: ⚽ Driven by the…
As we say goodbye to 2016 it’s time for my annual review of how the UK small cap markets have performed, and for a few investment ideas for 2017. In general, small caps had a good year in 2016, with the FTSE AIM All Share gaining an impressive 14.2%. The FTSE Small Cap Index was…
As discussed in my article for January’s edition of Master Investor Magazine, 2016 was a great year for small cap shares. The AIM All-Share rose by an impressive 14.3%, the FTSE Small Cap Index surged by 11% and dozens of individual stocks grew in value by more than 100%. Three stocks even finished the year…
There are generally considered to be two ways in which companies can grow their earnings. The first, and most common for businesses both large and small, is organic growth – whereby a company expands its existing, or “internal”, operations via increasing sales, breaking into new markets or launching new products for example. Inorganic, or acquisitive…
“Tenbaggers”, a term coined by investment legend Peter Lynch, are often thought of as the Holy Grail of equity investment. Referring to a stock with the potential to increase in value by a factor of ten, these elusive investments, just like winning the lottery or finding buried treasure, can change your life forever. But if…
