Featured post
Fund selection: the fired beat the hired
By ROBIN POWELL Outperforming the financial markets by identifying what securities to buy and sell, and when, is very hard. To quote Mark Hebner in his award-winning book Index Funds: The 12-Step Recovery Program for Active Investors by now in its tenth edition: “Picking stocks or bonds is an ill-fated strategy that wastes time,...
There’s widespread confusion about dividends
By ROBIN POWELL Let’s face it, we all like the idea of free money. Some will recall the excitement of learning they were in line for a windfall by virtue of having a few pounds saved with a building society...
Picking stocks is like looking for a needle in a haystack
By ROBIN POWELL The human brain is a truly wondrous thing. Though weighing only around three pounds, it contains approximately 86 billion neurons and is capable of processing around a billion billion (that’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,000) calculations every second. And yet, strangely...
Do you have an issue with horizon risk?
Everyone should have a long-term investment horizon. But we also have different time horizons for different goals and need to be aware of how those horizons change. Financial advisers are always telling their clients to invest for the long term....
The fundamental flaw of active ETFs
Active ETFs are all the rage. But, says ROBIN POWELL, they have a major design fault that should put you off. The clue is in the name. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you,...
Six lessons from A Random Walk Down Wall Street
It’s one of the most famous books on investing ever written. It’s sold more than two million copies. The investment philosophy set out in A Random Walk Down Wall Street, by the Princeton University economist Burton Malkiel, is very...
How wide is the gender pension gap?
You are probably familiar with the gender pay gap — the fact that women are often paid less than men for doing the same job. But another example of inequality that receives less attention is the gender pension gap. On average,...
