Good reads from around the Web.
You have until midnight tonight (5 April) to shovel any free cash into your ISA to make the most of your 2013/2014 allowance.
If you’re still reading then either you have already filled your ISA – well done – or you haven’t got enough spare cash.
Or you’re a silly billy. Because there is no advantage to holding any cash or investments outside of an ISA. Nada. Zip.
The Guardian [1] has a summary of some of the best places to stash your cash, though I can’t say whether you’ll be able to get money into every one of them in the scant hours remaining. Some firms are faster than others.
Alternatively, if you’ve got a share ISA already open, double check to see if you’ve already filled it to the max this year.
Me, I load up my shares ISA within the first few days of every new tax year. Why waste a moment of potential tax-free compounding?
So I’ll be smugly enjoying a smoggy London day!
From the blogs
Making good use of the things that we find…
Passive investing
- Foolish in love and money – Rick Ferri [2]
- High frequency drama vs dramatically lower costs – Total Return Investor [3]
- Chasing complexity – the research puzzle [4]
Active investing
- Passive versus active investing – Investing Caffeine [5]
- More on “the dark side” of tracker funds – Irate Investor [6]
- When should a share be labelled “speculative”? – Beddard/iii [7]
- How much should you pay for a company? – Geoff Gannon [8]
- Finding value in today’s UK stock market – UK Value Investor [9]
Other articles
- Should you test an advisor with part of your money? – Oblivious Investor [10]
- Risk takes centre stage when you retire – Retirement Cafe [11]
- London is forever blowing house price bubbles – Under the Money Tree [12]
Ruse of the week: Are you an older saver of pensionable age with £8,000 handy? The Telegraph [13] explains how a loophole in the new pension legislation enables you to make a near-instant £500. Hargreaves Lansdown, which pointed out the wheeze, expects it to be closed down soon enough.
Mainstream media money
Some links are Google search results – in PC/desktop view these enable you to click through to read the piece without being a paid subscriber of that site.1 [14]
Passive investing
- Michael Lewis’ book on high frequency trading and you – NYTimes [15]
- Try doing nothing for a change – Ritholz/Bloomberg [16]
Active investing
- “Peakdrift” is a curse of the market [Search result] – FT [17]
- Flying “PIIGS” outperform [Search result] – FT [18]
- Only mid-cap value managers beat US indices in past 5 years – CityWire [19]
Other stuff worth reading
- London house price madness can’t end well… – Guardian [20]
- …and now could be the worst time to buy-to-let – Telegraph [21]
- You don’t work as hard as you think you do [Search result] – FT [22]
- Why don’t the 1% feel rich? – The Atlantic [23]
- UK farmland prices rising faster than prime London – Telegraph [24]
Book of the week: Curious about all the high frequency trading fuss in the media this week? The book that started it – Flash Boys [25]
Like these links? Subscribe [26] to get them every week!
- Reader Ken notes that: “FT articles can only be accessed through the search results if you’re using PC/desktop view (from mobile/tablet view they bring up the firewall/subscription page). To circumvent, switch your mobile browser to use the desktop view. On Chrome for Android: press the menu button followed by “Request Desktop Site”.” [↩ [30]]