Underperforming Investments – Is Your Pension Amongst Them?
70% of investments underperform – Is your pension invested amongst them? As an investor, you want to choose the best for your investments. It’s certainly not an easy task. And with pensions at the front of many investors’ minds at the moment, the performance of investments you’re relying on for the future, a performance check […]
Cautious Managed Funds
You’re a cautious investor. So you want your investments in a cautious managed fund because, you think, you’ll be taking less of a risk, right? Well, not exactly. You could find that your definition of cautious when it comes to managed funds is very different from the investment world’s definition. So how do you make […]
Cheaper Investments
The retail world – making thousands from your investments. How often do we come back from holiday and complain about the quality of customer service we receive when we return? Fascinating. Yet somehow we continue to experience this customer service and accept it. None is more true than the financial services industry and our ability […]
Cheap investments – get back to bed
Just how inefficiently can someone invest money? I’ve always been told to make columns meaningful. Talk about the sizzle not the sausage, talk about how fast the car goes, not how many piston things it has! I have assessed how most people are currently investing via the calls from the column so this is pretty […]
Past investment performance
My financial adviser is telling me to invest into a range of funds based on their investment performance last year. Is there any relationship between last year’s investment performance and the future performance? A turkey sits all year with the belief everyone cares about it. As each day goes past, it believes it can’t get […]
Funds – Track or Trade?
There is often a wonderful argument delivered by the different sides in relation to the argument ‘do I invest in a tracker fund or a fund that is actively managed?’. Those last two words will catch most of you out as you will of course believe that your pension funds, endowments and bonds are all […]
Uncovering Hidden Charges
When asked about how stressful the responsibility can be for investing advice for the public, I balance the thought with how stressful my life would be should I not be qualified to make the decisions I do. It is only with a healthy cynicism that I have been able to break through worlds of emperors’ […]
Is the FTSE 100 safe?
Is the FTSE 100 safe? Hardly. Pay real attention now if you have a tracker sold to you as a cheap investment. The FTSE 100 is a measure of the UK’s top 100 companies; however, research by Schroders showed that 62% of the sales of FTSE 100 companies came from outside the UK. Thankfully the […]
Child Trust Funds
I have grandchildren and wanted to save for them but wanted to know if saving into a child trust fund was a good idea. When the child trust fund was first announced, I have to say I nearly choked. To what problem was it a solution? I couldn’t fathom it out. Most people took the […]
Understanding Investor Psychology
Managing Director, Worldwide Financial Planning, writes:
I was asked quite recently about how difficult investing money can be, given the current market conditions and how investors must be feeling. I was also asked at what point I believed the market would turn.
How can I diversify my investments to remove risk?
Reader Writes:
I have spoken to my bank and they have told me to diversify my investments to take risk out. Can you explain how that can be done?
Multi Managers – A Good Idea?
Reader Writes:
I have a range of investment funds across a wide selection of companies and I have heard about multi managers and how they manage all my money for me. Is this a good idea?