Friday afternoon was cold and damp and we had to walk from a parking point in the Hurlingham to All Saints Church on the north side of Putney Bridge for Tony Shearer’s memorial service – he died of a brain tumour a few months ago. He had been an approximate contemporary of mine at Rugby…
Well-off Aussies and Kiwis prefer to invest their hard-earned dollars in bricks and mortar. With home prices softening in the Antipodes, this could be a good moment to buy. Housing? No worries, mate Australians and New Zealanders can be very British. There is nothing they like more to chat about over a cup of tea,…
Interest rates in the UK have already started to rise. The Bank of England is now expected to increase them further over the coming months, with the UK now seemingly on a road to interest rate ‘normalisation’ over the medium term. However, the chances of a rapid rise in interest rates seem slim. Inflation has…
Over the last few months I’ve mostly written about high yield stocks and the occasional high-profile disaster. That sort of thing isn’t to everyone’s taste, so this month I’ll be looking at something completely different. More specifically, I’ll be looking at four high growth “dividend champions”, companies that have grown quickly whilst raising their dividend…
Contrarian investors are always on the lookout for unloved securities where the bad news is already baked in and there is a catalyst on the horizon to turn things around. A prime example is Ranger Direct Lending (LON:RDL), whichwas set up in 2015 to provide alternative secured funding to US small and medium-sized companies and…
Johnston Press (JPR) used to have a big private investor following. Nowadays, at 9.5p, it is capitalised at a trivial £10 million. But that conceals a huge £220 million debt problem which must be settled next year on or before 1st June 2019. Can they do it? I for one do not know the answer to…
New Zealand is a land of moderate weather, politics and economic policy. Growth prospects for the New Zealand stock market this year are also moderately good. Kia-Ora! When you enter New Zealand the passport check is accomplished by robots – but getting through the bio-security channel is lengthy and troublesome. If you have so much as…
Master Investor Show – the UK’s largest annual conference for private investors – has confirmed Saturday 6 April as the date of their 2019 flagship event. The event, which brings together thousands of visitors with public and private companies of varying sizes, will once again be hosted at London’s Business Design Centre. This year’s Master…
In recent months, the rate of inflation has been on a downward trend. This is highly significant because it means that wage growth is now ahead of inflation for the first time in over a year. As a result, consumer disposable incomes are now growing in real terms, and this could help to lift consumer…
Normal service was somewhat delayed by the exigencies of the road trip I have been on for two weeks to Asia and Australia. My colleague Anthony Chow and I have been doing the crossover (i.e. pre-IPO) institutional/UHNW (ultra-high net worth) round for Juvenescence Ltd and the result has been that by the time I get…
