The thing about investing in government bonds is the sheer size of the asset class. Trillions of Dollars, Euros, Yen, Reals or Sterling are raised every year by countries that need debt to balance their budgets. For the most part, the risk is quite low that a governmen...
There really are only two basic things you can do with your money to generate returns: either you acquire assets at a price in the hope that the value will increase over time, or you give your money to someone else, who pays you interest for the term of the loan. Every...
There it was again, the very tangible risk of something very bad happening. The coronavirus brought about fears of the unknown, the feeling of being helpless and that horrible premonition that things could get worse. The...
Why everything you thought about liquidity may be completely wrong.
People are obsessed with liquidity. It is the reason why UCITS funds are so popular, which provide investors the ability to get their money back on a daily or weekly basis. The regulator also views liqu...
I was sitting comfortably by my desk as my daughter suddenly came up from behind me and said “Boo”. As any steadfast, middle-aged warrior of the suburbs would do in this situation, I screamed “Hey”, to which another voice r...
Why there is no way to passively manage our monies – there is only how much we pay for it.
I find the whole debate about active versus passive investing amazing and in part, actually highly amusing. Mostly, that has to do with the fact that there really is no differenc...
The trend is your friend and we all know that. It simply means that until further notice, whatever has happened before, will continue to happen again. If the markets are going up, they will continue to go up and likewise, if the...
What’s the view from the EU and the big deal about Brexit?
One of my favourite lines from the cherished Lord of the Rings trilogy is “things are now in motion that cannot be undone”. And so it is with Brexit, as clear as Gandalf the Wizard himself knew to be true, there...
In a former life, I was seeking ways to relieve stress from work and improve my fitness, so a friend recommended I give kick-boxing a try. As it happened, the brother of one of my colleagues was the reigning British ultimate fighting champion and he agreed to give me l...
Being penny wise and pound stupid is a wonderful way of saying that the focus is wrong. Whereas we should be concerned about the big picture, instead we dither away at things with far less value. In investment terms, that means we should spend much more time on the so-...
