Investment Strategies

Time to Consider your Cash Holdings?

It was obvious from a recent FCA review of “platforms” (i.e. stockbrokers), that many retail investors held large amounts of cash in their portfolios. When folks are feeling the stock market has had a rather long bull run, perhaps they feel it is wise to keep a high level of cash. Or perhaps it’s because they simply can’t be bothered to move it when their high-street bank is offering such trivial rates as 0.2% per annum on deposit accounts. Needless to ...

The Market, Dunedin and Standard Life Smaller Companies Merger, and Aston Martin IPO

Is it not depressing when you go away for a week’s holiday and your portfolio falls every day in that time? I do monitor any exceptional movements while on vacation but try to avoid trading. It just seemed to be a general downward trend and reviewing the movement over that week my portfolio is down 1.73% while the FTSE All-Share is down 1.72%. So that is what I had already surmised. Those stocks that seemed to have become overblown did fall and ...

Return Versus Risk and Tips from Terry Smith

There was an interesting article by Fundsmith founder Terry Smith in the Financial Times on Saturday under the heading “Think globally and add a dash of small caps”. His articles are usually full of wisdom. In this case he first tackled the issue that the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) tells you that your returns relate to how much investment risk you are willing to take on. This might be seen as common sense – why would anyone take more risks if ...

Hedging Against Brexit

As we edge towards an abrupt Brexit as agreement with the EU has turned into a game of chicken, it’s worth considering some options. Or as my M.P. Bob Neill said about divorce on Twitter “the current system of divorce creates unnecessary antagonism in an already difficult situation” (he was talking about personal divorce in the UK as head of the Justice Committee but our EU divorce is looking very similar – acrimony is the word for it). Perhaps the Prime Minister ...