Stock-markets are falling. Does this mean that the nine-year bull market has come to an end, that shares are finally adjusting to some uncomfortable realities, as their extreme valuations have long suggested they would? [Read more…]
Shares: Should You Panic?
February 6, 2018 By
German government bonds decline
August 21, 2014 By
Over 2014 there has been a steady decline in the yield on German government bonds. As a result bunds have outperformed other developed markets. [Read more…]
Plan for Low-Risk Investing
November 27, 2013 By
Plan for Low-Risk Investing with the Browne Plan
The simplest way to invest is a Browne Plan. It promises steady capital growth with minimal downside risk, requires no management beyond an annual portfolio review, and frees you from having to make any decisions about what’s happening in the markets. [Read more…]
Keys to Improving Your Investment Profits
November 14, 2013 By
Crowd Money: A Practical Guide to Macro Behavioural Technical Analysis* is, in my opinion, the best new book on investing to be written for many years. [Read more…]
Quantitative Easing Madness
August 2, 2013 By
The Mysterious Madness Called QE
Quantitative Easing
Quantitative Easing (“money printing”). Investors love it. It’s an avalanche of liquidity that drives up the value of interest-sensitive investments. Everybody gets richer. Or so it seems. [Read more…]
Multi-asset strategies essential
February 11, 2013 By
Multi-asset strategies essential as volatility continues, say Barings
– Barings’ annual study of best and worst performing asset classes shows sharp swings in performance
– While European equities top the 2012 list, the class was one of the worst performing in 2011 and 2010
Annual research from Baring Asset Management (“Barings”) into the best and worst performing asset classes over the past five years has revealed that sharp swings in performance for mainstream investment sectors continued in 2012, underscoring the benefits of a multi-asset approach to investing. While European equities lead the way in terms of 2012 performance, returning 17.8%, the asset class was one of the worst performing in 2011 as well 2010 and 2008 (see table below). [Read more…]
Billions moving into land buys
October 25, 2012 By
Farmland is essentially a long-term investment
Farmland has risen in value at an average rate of 3.4 per cent a year since 1850 in the UK, and at an average of 6.2 per cent since 1967. Farm prices in the US have risen by 150 per cent in real terms over the past century. Some well-known private investors such as Jim Rogers, and some big institutional funds such as America’s TIAA-CREF, are moving billions into purchase of farmland in low-risk nations such as the US, Australia and Canada, and higher-risk areas in South America and East Europe. [Read more…]
Basic food crops evolved
October 22, 2012 By
Agriculture Business
Basic food crops evolved over an unusually favourable period
- There will be increased weather instability, notably floods and droughts, but also steadily increasing heat. The climate is changing and becoming more hostile to farming.
Grains have developed over many thousands of years in an unusually moderate and stable climate (moderate, that is, over a scale of hundreds of thousands of years); and selective breeding of the last few hundred years was also done in that moderate environment. [Read more…]
Escaping tax on gains
September 17, 2012 By
Escaping tax on income, wealth, capital gains
Income Tax
Although governments have become increasingly aggressive in attacking the use of international structures to reduce, avoid or evade tax, there are still ways of using global planning to this end. [Read more…]
Investing in Bonds: Is It Crazy
July 23, 2012 By
Treasury Bonds
Most advisers say it’s crazy to invest in bonds. But then they would, wouldn’t they? Nearly all of them, and their clients, missed out on what has been one of the greatest bull markets in history for this asset class. [Read more…]