A busy week on Monevator covered everything from banker bashing to, well, financial adviser bashing. But it wasn’t all wanton violence, with posts on how to start investing, UK home buying, and DIY hedge funds, too.
Still need to work on making one or two of those articles shorter, though!
My post of the week is from The Simple Dollar, the huge US blog, and it continues the ‘financial adviser – friend or foe?’ theme.
Pity first-time house buyers. Having finally seen the ladder lowered from the great property juggernaut in 2008, most could still only scramble on-board with a loan from the Bank of Mum and Dad.
And as mortgages have become easier to get in 2009, house prices have shot back up, reversing the UK house price crash before it had barely begun.
Some 45% of house purchases in May 2009 were by first-time buyers – a huge number by the standards of recent years. But by November the percentage was down to 19%, according to the National Association of Estate Agents.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could reduce the risk of investing in the stock market – or in gold or oil or any other risky asset?
People pay a fortune to hedge funds that claim to reduce the risks of investing – but can you do it yourself?
In this article I’ll introduce some techniques used by hedge fund managers and others to ‘hedge their bets’ when investing.
It’s not just me who feels about as sorry for bankers having their gravy train upset as I feel sorry for cancer cells that eventually kill their host.
A nice rant on The Motley Fool today goes in for some rumbustious banker bashing, too.
