I am delighted to say that I am currently in the sunshine enjoying my Christmas break and planning my holidays for 2010. I have made it a discipline of mine to go away every three months for at least a week. There are many reasons for this. Some are obvious and some less so. The "less so" is what I want to concentrate on today.

If you are looking to borrow money you will find it hard to believe that the credit crunch is officially over! That is not to say that everything is back to normal, but simply that interbank lending best measured by the three month libor rate recently fell to 0.55% versus a bank rate of 0.5%. That’s the good news.

The feedback from our recent investment dinner at the London Road Restaurant in Alderley Edge has been superb. My investment manager, Mike Deverell presented on the outlook for commercial property and our external speaker Mitchell Fraser Jones from Invesco Perpetual provided the outlook for UK equities. ... >> Comments (0)

It’s 8.20 am on 17 September and the FTSE is currently standing at 5,165, a whopping 47% or so increase in just over 6 months.

Following on from Colin’s blog on Dow Theory, I have discovered a new “system” myself.

There seems to be as many stockmarket theories as there are weather analogies and unfortunately most seem to be no more reliable.  ... >> Comments (0)

There have been plenty of stories in the press about house prices starting to rise again. Sorry to disappoint anyone waiting to sell their house, but we just don’t think rising prices will continue. Here’s why.

We have just finished our first round of investment dinners and I for one enjoyed all four. We were honored and privileged to have Justin Urquhart-Stewart from Seven Investment Management, Simon Edwards the owner and fund manager of Midas Capital Partners, Keith Wade the chief economist of Schroders and Bill Dining the chief economist of Aegon Asset Management as our guest speakers. ... >> Comments (0)

Thanks to my friend and client Jamie Gibson I am now a regular reader of John Mauldin’s “Outside the Box” (http://www.2000wave.com). Whilst I don’t always agree with John’s research it is nevertheless always an interesting and enlightening read. This week he focused on an article written by Doug Casey in 1997 which was based heavily on the research of Neil Howe who is a social scientist and historian. The 1997 article reads as follows: