Blog

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:

It’s a beautiful Sunday afternoon and I am sat in the back garden reading the money section from The Times.

I have just received an email promoting a new structured product which has made me very angry indeed!

Firstly, the email is headed “Do you want to earn 9% commission per month..?”!

It is one thing being thrown out of your home because you haven’t kept up the mortgage payments, but it is more galling to be thrown out because someone else hasn’t kept up with theirs. ... >> Comments (0)

It is amazing what a simple chat can achieve.

A potential client came to one of our investment dinners. His wife was ill and in a home, and he had just purchased an impaired life annuity for £266,000 to pay for her ongoing care fees.

We have been saying in our recent briefing notes and meetings that we were likely to be selling gilts from our Fixed Interest portfolio at some point in the near future. ... >> Comments (0)

10 years ago in 1999 the internet was going to mean the end of the high street. No more window shopping, just online purchases. No more supermarkets, just groceries delivered to your door. ... >> Comments (0)

It appears that house prices are rising again, the stockmarket is up 25% in less than two months, the pound is improving against both the dollar and the euro and retail sales remain stronger than expected. ... >> Comments (1)

We stopped using Zurich and their subsidiary Sterling over 12 months ago when we realized how precarious their cash fund was.  ... >> Comments (0)

Would you like more volatility?  I am often asked by clients why we don’t utilise Investment Trusts bearing in mind their cost effective structure.  There are two simple reasons, firstly an Investment Trust can borrow money in order to invest dramatically increasing the risk and secondly as “close ended” their selling price can be worth less than the value of their assets and sometimes their buying price can be worth more than the value of their assets. ... >> Comments (1)

It is Good Friday but so far I am yet to see anything good about it!  It is 2.45pm, I am in the office and I have been here since 7.00am this morning.  It is already going dark and the usual bank holiday rain has arrived. ... >> Comments (0)