#32 — The "twelfth 12th” of your 2017/2018 ISA
As many of you will be aware from the annual advertising bombardment that surrounds the ISA year end – you have until midnight this Thursday, April the 5th to use (or lose) this year’s ISA allowance. Given this reality, in the lead up to the deadline, I wanted to revisit some...
#31 — The UK’s number one finance blind spot?
Last week I was reminded of something I have run into time and time again since I set up Plain English Finance seven years ago: The fact that so many people in the UK do not understand the difference between a CASH ISA and a STOCKS AND SHARES ISA... This ...
#30 — ETFs - Still a great financial innovation
Responding to your questions on ETFs I have had a few questions recently about ETFs or Exchange Traded Funds (if you would like a reminder of what these are, I have written on the subject before in my book). One person in particular got in touch to ask me if ...
#29 — Stock markets still at record highs. What to do?
Are stock markets over valued or is there more upside from here? Many stock market indices continue to hit new highs day after day (more detail here). As each week passes and the S&P500, Dow Jones and other stock markets the world over continue their record breaking runs, ...
#28 — Happy news - our fund is LIVE!
I write today to pass on the happy news that our fund was given the green light last Friday by our depository firm, NatWest and our custodian, Bank of New York Mellon. This means it launched at midday today (Monday 25th of September 2017) and is now live and trading. Needless ...
#27 — Accounts you need to know about: Your ISA…
The most important account for someone UK-based to succeed financially is a stocks and shares ISA… If you really want to make giant strides with your financial situation you need to start saving some money from your income each month. No matter what your view of the UK pension system, yo...
#26 — Accounts you need to know about: Current Accounts and Your Pension…
Before you can make any real progress financially you need to optimise your financial service providers. Many people are quite understandably bewildered by the complexity of the financial services industry. Much of the industry likes to keep it that way so they can charge you high fees for bad products. ...
#25 — Are you Riding the Tiger’s Tail?
Regular readers of these articles will be aware of an ongoing and oft-repeated theme of mine: Namely that, to a certain degree at least, you can run your financial affairs so that you shouldn’t need to worry overly about stock market crashes (or crashes in financial markets more generally). As...
#24 — ZIRP, inflation, QE and other animals...
In my last article, I referred to two reasons for the concerted equity market strength of recent years: First, the impact of certain very real structural changes on companies – primarily technological development and related globalisation. Secondly, the impact of what has been going on in the bond market – that is to s...
Are stock markets over valued or is there more upside from here? In my last email I highlighted the fact that lots of market commentators are suggesting that stock markets are heavily over valued at the moment and it might be time to get out and move your investments into ...
