Market Statistics

Continued strong fundraising activity on AIM

Allenby Capital, whose CEO Nick Naylor spoke at ShareSoc's Investing Masterclass on Remuneration, have just issued their quarterly update which shows the way the AIM market continues to help companies requiring capital. AIM is playing an important role in these difficult Covid times, writes ShareSoc Director Cliff Weight. Key points in the report: AIM continued its strong fundraising performance in Q3 2020. By the end of September, the total funds raised year to date of £4,085m had already surpassed the £3,997m raised ...
Post Date: October 31, 2020 Read more

How important is the Individual Shareholder to UK PLC in the current climate?

On Thursday 7 May 2020 The LSE and Primary Bid ran a webinar on How important is the Individual to UK PLC in the current climate? There was an impressive panel made up of: Gavin Oldham, Chairman - Share Centre Richard Wilson, CEO - interactive investor Angela Knight CBE Andy Edmond, CEO, Equity Development Marcus Stuttard, Head of UK Primary Markets and AIM - London Stock Exchange plc The Chairman was  James Deal, COO - PrimaryBid The topics  discussed were: The daily trading ...
Post Date: May 10, 2020 Read more

Allenby Capital – AIM Market Update – Q4 2019

Allenby have posted a useful note on the state of Aim with lots of data, click here to Download note Key points: December bounce but 2019 remained a down...
Post Date: January 29, 2020 Read more

PE Will Eat Itself

How private equity has devoured public markets and is now devouring itself One of the key causes of the Woodford implosion was the number of illiquid, unquoted holdings in...
Post Date: November 20, 2019 Read more

FCA Views of the Financial Landscape

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) have published a document entitled “Sector Views” giving their annual analysis of the UK financial landscape and how the financial system is working – see https://tinyurl.com/yc492lkt. For retail investors there is a chapter on “Retail Investments” which is particularly worth reading. But we also learn that the “FCA continues to plan for a range of scenarios regarding Brexit” which is good to hear. I somehow doubt it will be settled tomorrow (15th January) in Parliament – I ...
Post Date: January 14, 2019 Read more

ETFs and Index Trackers – More Dangerous Than You Think

Lots of financial pundits have encouraged investors to be “passive” investors rather than try to pick stocks, or invest in funds that do that latter (“active” funds). Even the FCA has recently criticised active funds for being more expensive and the additional management fees end up impacting negatively on overall returns over time. So persuasive writers such as John Bogle have convinced many to take the “no brainer” route of buying Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) or other index tracking funds. But there ...
Post Date: August 14, 2017 Read more

Asset Management Market Study

I commented previously on the FCA's Asset Management Market Study, which suggested there was weak competition in this market. Needless to say, most asset managers do not seem to agree. ShareSoc has now submitted a response to the questions raised in that document which you can read here: Asset-Management-Market-Study-Response-2017-02-21. In summary, we agree with the general conclusions and support regulatory intervention where necessary. We also note that although the study does not address the issue directly of financial education, it is our view ...
Post Date: February 22, 2017 Read more

FCA Study of Asset Management – Interesting Interim Results

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has published an interim report on its Asset Management Market Study. Some of the results are not that surprising, but others are. For example, it reports that around half of retail investors were not aware that they were paying fund charges. Needless to point out perhaps that can be linked to another conclusion. Namely that there is weak price competition. How can investors be expected to compare prices when they are not even aware of the charges? Indeed ...
Post Date: November 18, 2016 Read more

Do Active Funds Underperform? But Costs are the Real Problem

On the 24 October the Financial Times FTfm supplement led with a front page article that was headlined "99% of Active US equity funds underperform". It also had a sub heading of "Almost all UK, global and EM funds have failed to outperform since 2006". So I sent a letter to the Editor which said the following, much of which they have published today (31/10/2016) plus letters from other writers making the same point. This is what my letter said: "Your headline in ...
Post Date: October 31, 2016 Read more

Cash or Shares. Which is Better?

An interesting article in Saturday's FTMoney (18/6/2016) by Paul Lewis suggested that you might be surprised to learn that if you had invested £10,000 in a cash account in 1998, you would have done better than investing in a FTSE-100 index tracker. It's surely odd for the Financial Times to persuade their own readers that cash is better than equities because a choice of cash might mean they no longer needed to read the FT - they could just use a ...
Post Date: June 20, 2016 Read more