March 2009

Trusting in the Rights and Issues Trust

March 31, 2009

Important: What follows is not a recommendation to buy or sell the Rights and Issues Trust. I’m just a private investor, storing and sharing notes. Read my disclaimer. Rights, Issues and complications The Rights and Issues Trust is a tiny, £33 million split cap investment trust focusing on UK smaller companies. It invests in small [...]

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Weekend reading for investors: 28/3/09

March 28, 2009

Every week I read a large number of personal finance and investing articles. Here’s my latest weekly shortcut to the best.

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What is your salary really worth?

March 27, 2009

To earn even £35,000 a year through passive investment income will be an impossible task for most of the population

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How stop loss investing can save you money

March 26, 2009

Like many investors who (perhaps foolishly) invest a portion of their funds into individual shares, I’ve an ambivalent relationship to stop loss investing strategies. If a stop loss ‘did what it said on the tin’, I’d have no complaints. Who wouldn’t want to Stop Losses when investing? It sounds like Nirvana, a one-way ticket to [...]

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The number one money maker for 99 per cent of people

March 24, 2009

There’s not much money to be made reminding people that their career and salary could be their number one financial asset.

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Normal service will resume shortly

March 21, 2009

The stock market might have mounted a bit of a recovery over the past ten days, but unfortunately your writer has gone the other way. Picking up a particular virulent strain of Lurgy maximus while messing about on the river last weekend, I’ve been confined to bed for the past 96 hours on a diet [...]

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Weekend reading for investors: 14/3/09

March 14, 2009

Every week I read a large number of personal finance and investing articles. Here’s my latest weekly shortcut to the best. I’m away suffering through a stag weekend today, so this selection of personal finance articles from the blogosphere doesn’t cover anything published after Thursday.

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Who isn’t buying the market right now?

March 11, 2009

Eating breakfast this morning, I caught Hugh Hendry, the gloomy and currently outperforming UK fund manager, on CNBC. Hendry’s main call, which he has been rewarded by repeating for months now, is to avoid equities. Yes, the market has fallen, Hendry says, but that doesn’t mean it won’t keep falling. Look at the Great Crash [...]

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Horizontal diversification

March 10, 2009

Horizontal diversification is when you hold different instances of the same asset class. In this form of portfolio diversification, you’re trying to reduce localised or industry sector specific risks. A broad index-based ETF is a good example of horizontal diversification.

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Reminder to Lloyds: If a government tries to sell you a bank, you say No

March 9, 2009

Today Lloyds Banking Group ceded control to the UK government in return for UK taxpayers insuring £260 billion of toxic loans it acquired via its government-brokered merger with HBOS. The UK government’s stake has jumped from 45% to 65% under the terms. Lloyds has also agreed with its new owners that it will lend an [...]

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Weekend reading for investors: 7/3/09

March 7, 2009

With UK interest rates now down to 0.5% and the dubious-sounding quantitative easing moving from a standing joke to official Bank of England policy, there’s no doubt we’re living through enduring historic times. If like me you ever wondered what it was like to work through the 1970s Winter of Discontent, let alone the Great [...]

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CNBC gets a pasting from Jon Stewart

March 6, 2009

After a slow start, comedians are rising to the credit crisis. I have some sympathy with Rick Santelli’s position, but Jon Stewart has the best lines: “If I’d followed CNBC’s advice I’d have a million dollars… provided I’d started with one hundred million dollars!” [Via PimpYourFinances]

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Quantitative easing: The uncomfortable truths

March 6, 2009

A few months ago, nobody but a few U.S. Federal Reserve groupies had ever heard of quantitative easing. Yet today we’re told it’s the only thing that can save the financial system from meltdown. Indeed, the U.S. authorities have been moving towards quantitative easing for months, while the Bank of England has just got a [...]

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Stocks vs corporate bonds

March 5, 2009

When you invest in a stock, you become a part-owner. When you instead invest in its corporate bonds, you’re instead a creditor.

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Vote for Monevator (or my rival) at Free Money Finance

March 4, 2009

Update: Voting is now closed, and we’re into round 3. Thanks everyone!

Vertical diversification

March 4, 2009

Vertical diversification is when your investment portfolio is spread across different types of assets. Cash, government bonds, corporate bonds, property and shares can each be expected to behave slightly differently and so produce different returns, as circumstances change. For instance, government bonds may soar when stock markets crash, because frightened investors sell their shares to [...]

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Warren Buffett’s annual letter to shareholders: 2008

March 2, 2009

I spent a few hours this morning reading Warren Buffett’s new 2008 letter to shareholders. Maybe I should be worried the direction my life is taking, but Buffett’s annual letter has become a highlight of the year for me. It’s hard to write about investing in an engaging way (as Monevator subscribers will doubtless confirm) [...]

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