Good reads from around the Web.
I may have taken the week off to get festive, but a surprising number of other writers didn’t.
Blame, the Americans, who don’t even take Boxing Day off! No wonder they got to the moon.
Mind you, I’m sure more of you are shopping in the Sales then reading financial websites right now. Online shopping has been a boon for me at this time of year, as for decades I sat in the provinces over Christmas and the New Year with family. By the time I got back to London, it was size 44 large or bust – and not even my seasonally prodigious appetite could match that.
Here’s a shortcut to the sales where I’ve been picking up a few bargains:
Happy new year!
From the blogs
Making good use of the things that we find…
Passive investing
- When active beats passive – Rick Ferri
- Bill Gross got lucky again (with his bond picks) – The Finance Buff
- Predicting bond fund returns: Past performance or yield? – Oblivious Investor
Active investing
- Adding Vodafone to a HYP – Retirement Investing Today
- Gobbling up the all-you-can-eat data buffet – Investing Caffeine
- The 6 biggest investing lessons of 2012 – The Reformed Broker
- Apple is no Polaroid, but… – The Brooklyn Investor
Other articles
- Cure yourself of tiny details syndrome – Mr Money Mustache
- Beware of investors bearing charts – Crawling Road blog
- Channel 4 is looking for Britain’s savvy spenders – Miss Thrifty
- True professionals don’t fear amateurs – Seth Godin
Product of the week: According to The Guardian, the lowest personal loan rates for a decade now come courtesy of Tesco Bank. Customers can borrow between £7,500 and £15,000 at 5.2%
Mainstream media money
Note: Some links are to Google search results – these enable you to click through to read the piece without you being a paid subscriber of the site
Passive investing
- Swedroe: Great economies don’t usually mean great returns – CBS
- Roth: 3 financial predictions for 2013 – CBS
- Emerging markets: The passive choice? – FT beyondbrics
Active investing
- Is the bond bull market over? – The New York Times
- Country markets by CAPE ratio [Graph] – Business Insider
- Americans miss $200 billion abandoning stocks – Bloomberg
- Top 12 investing tools of 2012 [US bias] – TradeStreaming
- Emerging markets in 2012 [Returns chart] – FT beyondbrics
Other stuff worth reading
- 2013: N0 more ‘free’ financial advice [Search result] – FT
- Southend heads property winners and losers in 2012 – Guardian
- Only your investing goals matter – New York Times
- The big corruption in small gifts – Wall Street Journal
- Do we face a Star Wars or a Star Trek future? – FT Alphaville
- Buffett says women will save US economy – Telegraph
- What’s it like to be an adult and not have kids? – Slate
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I prefer sales shopping using shopstyle.co.uk which automatically searches nearly all the UK clothing stores with pre-set criteria (including discount level)
Unfortunately shopstyle just does clothes
Moneysavingexpert also has a similar tool which is newly introduced. I don’t personally like so much as it also searches ebay bid sites and the interface is pretty ugly
Oooo, Ted Baker, what did you buy?!) (Finally something I feel a bit of an expert on has arrived on this blog! 🙂 )
Hi TI
Thanks for the CAPE link, a topic which is of great interest to me. I’d love to know how old that data is, what indices they have used plus how they constructed it because I don’t agree with the UK accuracy at all.
The US data pretty much matches mine. They say the PE10 is 21.1 and I say 21. At this value I believe the US market is about 27% over valued and so my mechanical strategy has me underweight the US which matches their recommendation.
My UK data shows a PE10 of 12.3 vs their 14.4. That’s a big difference and would push the UK down near the 10 cheapest regions. I’m basing my analysis on the FTSE100 and use the CPI for inflation. A PE10 of 12.3 is in my opinion about fairly valued and not cheap as they suggest for anything with a PE10 of about 12.
My Aus data shows a PE10 of 15.3 vs their 15.7 so we’re not far off. I suggest an over valuation of about 12% meaning I am slightly underweight the ASX200.
Cheers
RIT
Some do still read financial stuff over Christmas.
From I read about a new investing platform that lets you compare platform costs before you buy.
Very interesting.
https://www.rplan.co.uk/Home/CostComparison
Thank you for the mention. Have a happy new year!
@RIT — I wonder if it’s the same data as the Barclays Capital Gilt-Equity series, since the research is from the same bank? Just checked, and the latest (2012) sources Haver Analytics and Datastream Global Equity Indices, among others. Maybe that’s a clue for you?
@Harry — You’re welcome!
@Curious-Sarah — It’s Ted Baker’s take on a tweed blazer. 40% off, and I waited for the sales, too. (And then I hunted across the Web for the last one in my size). I know arch-frugalists will say I could have got a blazer for £30 from Debenhams but that’s not my kid of money-aware shopping. I sometimes like nice things to wear, but I buy rarely and well, and extremely well within my means. 🙂
@Steve — Yes, those chaps are trying some interesting stuff. Nick from rplan comments here now and then. 🙂
@Neverland — Thanks for the pointer, will investigate. Lately though I’m finding I just prefer to go the sites I like, unless I know I’m after a particular model (especially electronics, where I’d always just hunt for the cheapest reliable source). Maybe part of the web’s evolution back into a High Street, and away from a discount store? Or maybe I don’t shop enough! 😉
Don’t have to excuse yourself to me Mr The Investor! I know Ted Baker well, very pretty (in a man-handsome way of course).
I was wondering about a link to the exact blazer but I know you are a man of international mystery and perhaps do not want to be identified about the streets of London town! 🙂
@Investor
Do you get a lot of groupies on this blog? o:-)
I really enjoy reading your site. I definetly perfer online shopping as opposed to regular shopping. Of the following sites Amazon is my favorite.
@Sarah — It’s the ‘Moosh’ one, but it looks like I bought the last of the line (hence the discount I guess) as they’ve sold out now. You can currently see a pic top left here: http://bit.ly/WawRg7.
@Neverland — If only an enquiry about my threads was tantamount to groupie-dom, I’d be spending a lot more at Ted Baker et al! 😉