April 2009

Seven psychological quirks that destroy investment returns

April 30, 2009

This is a guest post from Tim who authors the Psy-Fi blog, an excellent take on psychology and finance. Making money from stocks is easy enough if we can defeat the main enemy – ourselves. There’s no getting around the fact that us humans are subject to lots of biases and psychological quirks that combine [...]

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Crisis investing: Specific news events

April 29, 2009

Part one of this series introduced crisis investing and looked at the opportunity to profit when vague fears affect the stock market. But how should you react when a specific event makes headline news? Some events can be very significant for both history and stock markets, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall or [...]

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Structured products and ‘guaranteed’ equity bonds were never a good idea

April 28, 2009

A financial story gathering steam is the alleged miss-selling of structured investment products that ‘guaranteed’ your capital was safe. The issue concerns products ultimately backed by Lehman Brothers, the failed U.S. investment bank. Since what is left of Lehamn Brothers may be unable to honor its commitments as the underwriter of certain elements of the [...]

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Crisis investing as swine flu panic spreads

April 27, 2009

Deciding how to react to a crisis like a potential flu pandemic, a natural disaster or war is one of the most controversial aspects of stock market investing. Many panics, whether they affect the whole market or individual companies, turn out to be false alarms. Even those scares that have substance often turn out to [...]

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Weekend reading for investors: 25/4/09

April 25, 2009

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

Assume every investment can fail you

April 24, 2009

I assume every investment I make can leave me with nothing. I don’t expect them to (in the case of cash and government bonds, I think it’s extremely unlikely) but I never bank on 100% guarantees. When I buy individual shares, I assume the company can go bust, even if it is one of the [...]

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Battle of the UK Budget 2009 calculators

April 23, 2009

I guestimated in my rant about the new 50% tax rate introduced in the UK Budget yesterday that I wouldn’t be much better or worse off because of the various changes. A quick skim this morning through the various online calculators that have popped up proves the point: I will be just a couple of [...]

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The new 50% tax rate is about securing votes, not revenues

April 22, 2009

I had a lot of fun today covering the UK Budget over on the Monevator Twitter channel. It was fun racing other finance bloggers and the bloke who does the BBC captions to announce the news. There were two occasions though when I was late with my updates. Both times it was because I was [...]

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Why I’m celebrating the annual ISA limit being raised to £10,200

April 22, 2009

Amid the horror story that was the UK budget today, one bright spot stood out for those of us trying to save and invest our way to wealth. The government is raising the annual limit on ISA contributions from £7,200 to £10,200. Half of this ISA limit can be ‘wrapped’ around cash savings, just like [...]

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Is it too late to buy Barclays shares?

April 20, 2009

I looked last week at the steep rises in US and UK bank share prices as the fear factor has fallen back. U.S. banks are up 50% over the month, for instance. But in the case of certain UK banks, the reversal has been even more extreme. Consider Barclays shares here in the UK. When [...]

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Weekend reading for investors: 18/4/09

April 18, 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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Why have bank shares risen so far, so fast?

April 17, 2009

The only thing worse than losing money in the investing game is thinking about profitable opportunities you missed out on. (Yes, investing is pretty much a recipe for misery. Seriously, go invest in a tracker instead). Anyone brave enough to buy certain UK bank shares a few weeks ago would by now have made a [...]

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Opportunity cost when starting a business

April 16, 2009

I was talking to a friend last night about what I’m currently doing with my life, and discussing whether either of us fancied starting a new business in the teeth of the recession. He told me – not for the first time – that he was getting itchy feet, and that he felt in a [...]

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Should investors respond to the strengthening UK pound?

April 15, 2009

(Source: Google Finance) When I wrote about currency risks and opportunities for investors in January, I mentioned I was going to leave my holdings in Japan untouched, rather than cashing in on the Japanese yen’s strength by converting my Nikkei tracker funds back into UK pounds. At the end of March, however, I changed my [...]

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Weekend reading for investors: 11/04/09

April 11, 2009

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

Shortsandlongs.com offering £300 if you switch your spread betting firm

April 8, 2009

A quick note for UK-based readers who are using spread betting to try to profit from shares or other financial instruments. I noticed in yesterday’s City A.M. newspaper here in London that the new-ish spread betting website shortsandlongs.com is offering £300 if you switch your existing spread betting account to them. Another attraction is they [...]

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Strategies for investing in bear markets

April 7, 2009

This is the final part in a series of three posts on riding out a bear market. To be sociable and mix things up a bit, the first two posts are on two other splendid financial blogs: MoneyNing (Part 1: Beat market volatility by being boring) Investing School (Part 2: Ignore your portfolio for months [...]

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Six ways in which stop losses can damage your wealth

April 6, 2009

We’ve already looked at the benefits of stop losses in a previous post on Monevator. Please do read that introductory stop loss article if you’re not sure what a stop loss is, or why you might want to employ one. Personally, I rarely use stop losses nowadays, especially in the guise of an automatic sell [...]

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Weekend reading for investors 4/4/09

April 4, 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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Spring bounce for falling UK housing market probably just a speed bump

April 3, 2009

They say even dead cats bounce, and that’s equally true of markets. While I wouldn’t be surprised to see this week’s stock market rally turn into something more substantial over the next 18 months, I’d be shocked if UK house prices are higher in 2010. I write this in the light of yesterday’s report from [...]

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Compound interest turbo-charges your salary, too

April 1, 2009

Just as compound interest multiplies your savings pot, so climbing the corporate pole will boost your income after a few years.

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