by The Investor
on October 30, 2007
Richard Farleigh has made a lot of money via the markets – tens of millions, maybe hundreds. This book doesn’t give a precise number, though we do learn that the Australian investor’s first ambition was to be a bushranger like Ned Kelly. (Think highwayman Dick Turpin with a bucket on his head. Not so far removed from some institutional investors, a cynic might suggest…)
Farleigh has also had two recent doses of TV fame – briefly as a moneyman from Monaco in Trouble at the Top, a business show that focused on the Home House members’ club in London he helped set up, and via a stint on the thinking man’s X Factor, BBC2’s Dragon’s Den.
In the modern world, of course, the TV outings outweigh self-made millions as a reason to get a book deal; Ant and Dec could probably release a best-selling book on money, if they weren’t so busy making it. And for his part, Farleigh has the boyish looks and the charm to give the boys from Byker’s Grove a run for their money.
With its cover length shot of the smiling author and a slightly dumbed-down title (it was originally released as Taming the Lion in 2005), it’s hard to not to open Farleigh’s 100 Secret Strategies for Successful Investing
expecting day-glo stickers and a My First Investment wallchart to fall out.
But that’d be unfair, and not only because Farleigh was by far the nicest investor ever to grace the Den.
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by The Investor
on September 28, 2007
Previous posts in this high yield share investing series have argued the case for dividends, considered what makes a good high yield share, and stressed the need for diversification. Now it’s time to make yourself a cup of tea and settle down to see exactly how you can construct a high yield portfolio for yourself.
This is probably one of the most detailed (or long-winded!) run throughs of portfolio construction on the Web, but it should help your understanding to see the thought processes for yourself. I hope you enjoy it – or failing that at least stay awake…
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by The Investor
on September 26, 2007
THE SCENE: A beautiful couple – they might be models fresh from a home shopping catalogue photoshoot – relax in their sixth-floor two-bedroom, two-bathroom, new build apartment.
He is in the kitchen area, mixing up mojitos on the island unit. She is on the balcony, gazing across the city landscape (an out-of-focus backdrop of railway tracks, supermarket car parks and the back of the block next door). And unseen in these shiny advertisements is the Buy-To-Let (BTL) investor in the suburbs, tearing her hair out as she tries to make the maths work.
Welcome to the bursting edge of Britain’s housing bubble. Get out while you can.
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by The Investor
on September 20, 2007
‘My dear Mr Clennam,’ returned Ferdinand, laughing, ‘have you really such a verdant hope? The next man who has as large a capacity and as genuine a taste for swindling, will succeed as well. Pardon me, but I think you really have no idea how the human bees will swarm to the beating of any old tin kettle; in that fact lies the complete manual of governing them. When they can be got to believe that the kettle is made of the precious metals, in that fact lies the whole power of men like our late lamented.
Ferdinand Barnacle (Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens)
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