There was some interesting research published recently about the relative performance of shares and cash. Paul Lewis, the presenter of Radio 4’s Moneybox programme, compared the returns from a FTSE 100 tracker fund with the interest you could get by investing in the ‘best buy’ one year savings bonds. The traditional view is that the…
Investors with long memories may have been spooked by the recent activity in the Investment Association’s property sector. A number of fund providers, including Aberdeen, Henderson, M&G and Standard Life Investments, have switched from their normal offer price to the lower bid or mid price. This has reduced the value of these holdings by as…
As seen in the lastest issue of Master Investor Magazine Investing in companies that develop or utilise new technology can be a rewarding but risky business. If you had money in the markets during the run up to the dot.com bubble that burst so dramatically in March 2000, you will know exactly what I mean.…
In the last few months there has been growing concern about the risks facing the global economy, with one of the most chilling statements coming from Lord Rothschild, the chairman of RIT Capital Partners, who said that we may be “in the eye of a storm”. The increased air of caution and lack of direction…
Investors who are looking for an attractive source of income may want to think about using a portfolio of peer-to-peer loans. The obvious way to do this would be to open an account at a lending platform such as Zopa, Ratesetter or Funding Circle, but the easier – and currently better value – option would…
Up until July 2015 the biotech sector had enjoyed a multi-year bull market, but many of these stocks have fallen back sharply in the last few months with the NASDAQ Biotechnology Index down about 31% from its peak. There are a handful of specialist funds operating in this area and they have all been badly…
I recently highlighted the possibility that it could be time for value funds to outperform and flagged up some of the closed-ended options operating in this area. There are also a number of interesting open-ended funds that might be worth considering. One of the fund ratings agency FundCalibre’s favourites is the L&G UK Alpha Trust,…
As seen in the lastest issue of Master Investor Magazine Warren Buffett is one of the most successful investors of all time and has amassed a personal fortune of more than $67 billion over a long career stretching back to the 1950s and beyond. If you want to profit directly from his investment expertise you…
The most popular area of the market in recent weeks has been the Targeted Absolute Return sector with £243m of net retail sales in February and £485m in March. This was in sharp contrast to the massive £682m outflow from UK All Companies funds and reflects a general air of investor caution. There are 75…
The launch of Terry Smith’s Fundsmith Emerging Equities Trust (FEET) in June 2014 attracted a huge amount of interest, but the shares are now trading just below the issue price of 1,000 pence. Despite the disappointing start, Smith has recently said that he expects it to outperform his highly successful Fundsmith Equity fund over the…
