Don’t smirk: Settling down with a good book on investment can be oddly soothing. As the light dawns over your financial blackspots, panic is replaced by calm. Before long you’re scanning the Financial Times with aplomb, and even reading the small print. (Well, not all the time: I’m currently enjoying Harry Potter and the Deathly [...]
2007
You’ve bought a share and – ye gads! – it’s gone up 30%. Should you sell it and take the profit? It sounds like a simple question, but the answer, my friends, is complicated and controversial enough to give us the stock market we know and love, with all its wild oscillations in share prices, [...]
Buying a house in Britain today costs a lot more than renting it. Fair enough, you might think: Home owners have seen prices triple in the past decade, so it’s understandable that it should cost more to buy your suburban castle and so potentially profit than to merely rent it. But wait a minute: If [...]
Dividends are typically declared twice a year in the UK, when the company announces its interim and final results. The two dividend payments declared add up to the total dividend for the year. The historical yield is calculated by dividing last year’s declared dividend by the current share price. The forecast yield, in contrast, is [...]