I was on a call with a reader talking about what direction global equity markets might go next. Obviously, not possessing a crystal ball, my thoughts were purely speculative but this reader had been a little spooked by the market decline in early 2020 and although they hadn’t sold everything wanted my opinion on what […]
A few years ago, I had the good fortune of bumping into someone (let’s call him James) that had a significantly more advanced financial life than my own. He’d made money in construction a few decades ago and now lived a relatively comfortable life on the proceeds. Some of their family still worked but mostly
A few months ago, the thought of Corbyn and his gang of magic money men was genuinely making me wonder whether we’d still have an economy by 2021. Ironically, the ruling Conservative party seem to have gone completely the same way; FREE MONEY FOR ALL! Billions of pounds in furlough money, billions of pounds in
NIRP – Negative Interest Rate Policy. ZIRP – Zero Interest Rate Policy. For around fourty years, bonds have been in a huge bull market with rates falling further and further. For as long as I can remember, the basic formula of lending money has been a simple one; “I lend you money and after an
In part 1 of this series, I covered the ’spectrum’ of how to run an economy; from a full ’free market’ economy to a ’socialist’ utopian central planning model. When government spending gets to a high percentage of GDP (think 45-50% and above) there can be obvious benefits including a highly educated workforce, efficient healthcare,
If you’ve managed to move out from behind your sofa recently and take a peek at the news, you might have noticed an uptick in the number of central banks announcing ’interventions’ to support the UK economy. Further rounds of quantitative easing, rate cuts, loans and grants to small businesses, mortgage and bill ’holidays’ and
I was chatting to a reader about share prices and was asked whether I consider a falling share price to be a negative indicator. Surely, if the market is a combination of hundreds of individual investors expressing their opinions then a falling price indicates that more people have found a reason to sell than to
Reader question: Is a falling share price a negative indicator? Read More »
The Bank of England is a comparatively modern institution when held against other national banks such as the Bank of Geneva (founded in 1345) or the Bank of Venice (founded in 1157). It was originally conceived by a merchant by the name of William Patterson in 1689 and was incorporated by William the 3rd in
Those of you that used to follow this blog will have noticed that I’ve been somewhat absent over the last few months. It will therefore come as little surprise to hear that I’ve been extraordinarily busy but happily have found some time to sit down and pen another article. When I started this blog in
Ever since 2008 the global economy has been experiencing an unprecedented period of low interest rates, but in 2016, the US Federal Reserve began to tentatively increase rates with a view to staving off inflation caused by a decade of cheap and plentiful money supply. In addition, in late 2018, the Fed decided to start
The US Federal Reserve reverses their rate hikes policy Read More »
Stories have recently started appearing in the media that Italy, the third biggest economy in the Eurozone, has successfully passed initial proposals to create a currency alternative to the Euro, it’s current currency of choice. During last year’s elections, the ruling coalition ran on a platform of policies that toyed with the idea of returning
Italy opens proposals for new alternative currency Read More »
Unless you’ve been living under a rock this week, you’ll have read the extensive coverage of Neil Woodford’s decision to suspend trading in one of his funds. My understanding is that this makes it temporarily impossible for an investor to buy or sell units in the fund, or to transfer units they already own between
A few months ago I wrote an article about the declining standards of debt in issue and how I believe this is going to impact an awful lot of investors that stick with the received wisdom of ‘bonds are safe, equities are risky’. I was therefore interested to read that 2019 is shaping up to
The appetite for extremely risky assets has grown and grown since the financial crisis of 2008. More debt and margin. It seems like noone is thinking about risk – just reward. Every since the first debt was issued, there have been individual and institutions that we all know shouldn’t be lent money under any circumstances.
Having previously written about the serious danger presented to UK investors by the crisis of credibility facing the UK’s audit industry, I’m yet to see any serious measures taken to suggest this beyond an attempt to drive ‘competition’ in the industry. Why are authorities not undertaking a wholesale review of the effectiveness of auditing? Late
More competition won’t change the culture of auditing Read More »
