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Eurofinuse adopts manifesto

Post Date: January 27, 2014

Eurofinuse, a representative body for European shareholder organisations of which ShareSoc is a Member, has adopted a "Better Finance Manifesto". They are launching this before the European Parliament elections in May to try and influence politicians to adopt policies to protect savers and investors over the coming years.Although some of the manifesto policies are focussed on problems in other countries in Europe than the UK, there are many meritorious aspects. Here's just a few of the issues they cover:1. That there ...

AIM is no longer a dog, but the mastiffs are the winners

Post Date: January 24, 2014

There was an interesting analysis of the performance of AIM stocks in a recent "AIM Journal", a publication sponsored by Finncap. As others have pointed out, AIM finally changed course after a long streak of poor performance, and the AIM index actually beat both the FTSE-100 and FTSE-250 indices in 2013.If you had invested in the AIM index back when it was formed back in 1996, even with dividends reinvested you would still be losing money. And that is the case ...

Silverdell Shareholder Meeting Report

Post Date: January 22, 2014

There was a meeting attended by about 20 Silverdell shareholders in Beckenham on the 20th January. A report of the meeting is present here: www.sharesoc.org/Silverdell_Shareholder_Meeting_Report.pdfIt covered what was known about the events at this AIM company, where the shares were suspended out of the blue, and delisted 6 months later with not much communication to shareholders in the meantime. The company has announced that the shares are worthless. Also discussed was what actions shareholders might take at this point in time and ...

Hargreaves Lansdown doubles charges for some investors

Post Date: January 17, 2014

On the 15th January Hargreaves Lansdown (HL) announced new charges on its investment platform, which is one of the most widely used by private investors. The changes are no doubt provoked by the new rules whereby funds can no longer pass part of their charges back to HL, as a result of the RDR (Retail Distribution Review). But the changes will mean that the annual fees paid to HL by some investors will double. ShareSoc has issued a press release explaining ...

Inflation down the Government says. No it’s up.

Post Date: January 14, 2014

The Office of National Statistics have reported that inflation fell to 2% in December 2013. That's the Government's target for inflation even though it has not met it for some years. Mr Cameron said it was "welcome news".Before we all rejoice, unfortunately that is based on only one measure of inflation - the Consumer Price Index (CPI). On the more widely used Retail Price Index (RPI) inflation was actually up from 2.6% to 2.7%. In reality the RPI is probably more ...