Image by Startup Stock Photos on pexels.com In recent years we have become accustomed to an expansion in the number of choices available to us as consumers and it is no different in investing. However, increased choice also brings increased complexity. With personal finance already fairly...
Image by Sora Shimazaki on pexels.com Last year the UK government revealed that it faced a liability estimated at £17bn in connection with ‘unlawful’ age discrimination within public sector pension schemes. The situation arises from decisions made in the early part of the last decade which...
Image by Tranmautritam on pexels.com Pretty well all investors understand that investment success entails buying (relatively) low and selling (relatively) high. The difficulty that we face is that it is never obvious until after the event whether the value was low or high at a particular...
Image by Mohamed_hassan on pixabay.com As you will have noticed, 2020 was a difficult one for the forecasters. While what was to become the coronavirus pandemic had started, nowhere was it apparently recognised that within months it would spread around the world and result in significant...
Image from Pexels.com One of the questions which concerns most investors is the rate at which they can safely draw on their portfolio to meet their lifestyle costs without running the risk of depleting it too early. Unsurprisingly, this is an issue which has also featured...
Image by PublicDomainPictures at pixabay.com Now that the US election appears to be (at least largely) decided and given the recent news about potential coronavirus vaccines, in the last few weeks investors have been focused on equities. This is hardly surprising given that the index of...
Image from rjmcsorley on pixabay.com Watching the results of the US presidential election this month has proved akin to observing a train crash, in that however much I may have preferred to have done something else, the spectacle has proved oddly compelling viewing. I briefly studied...
Image by Ketut Subiysanko on pexels.com It is common for investment funds to be managed with reference to a published index, in part to allow investors to have some indication as to how it might perform in the future. Over the long term, it is reasonable...
Image by Tumisu on Pixabay.com Yet again, it appears that an issuer of mini bonds has failed, leaving its investors with little or no prospect of recovering their investment. In this instance it is a firm, Wellesley, whose TV advertisements I had actually seen myself. I...
Image by Burak K on pexels.com Having concluded that CGT changes were at least a viable possibility in the near future, the client’s next question was whether they might have an impact on the stockmarket. Their thinking behind this is that, particularly if the change were...