Tuesday December 6, 2011 at 9:00am
Solar Energy will form an increasing part of the UK power supply over the coming years. This is especially true as a consequence of recent UK and European legislation which requires that 30% of UK electricity is provided from renewable sources such as solar and wind. As only 5.5% of power comes from such sources at present there is significant growth to be expected in the renewable energy sector.
In April last year the government introduced a 25 year feed-in tariff to encourage greater invest....
Thursday August 25, 2011 at 9:00am
Although a daily report on the position of the FT100 index of UK shares is totally irrelevant to the long term investor, the media insist on relaying it in almost every news report at the moment.
Steve Forbes, publisher of US Forbes Magazine, makes an interesting point; “You make more money selling advice than following it. It’s one of the things we count on in the magazine business – along with the short memory of our readers.”
There is no doubt that big movements in....
Thursday July 7, 2011 at 9:00am
Gone are the days when an investment in the FTSE all share index would provide a reliably, healthy rate of return. For the last 11 years the FTSE all share index has returned only 2.4% per annum.
The investment winners today are those who focus on keeping costs low whilst also investing in a broader, globally diversified portfolio. One such globally diversified portfolio when back tested returned 7.4% per annum for each of the past 11 years. Compare this with the FTSE 100 which has actually lo....
Thursday June 30, 2011 at 9:00am
How many parents out there are tearing their hair out worrying, not whether their son or daughter will make the grade and get into university, but how on earth they are going to fund them if they do?
If you have a child going to University later this year the cost over 3 years might be as much as £52,000. This is based on course fees around £9,000 per annum, accommodation of £5,000 per annum and living costs on top of say another £100 per week. And that assumes they liv....
Thursday May 26, 2011 at 10:00am
In a previous blog I talked about why many investors feel confused and uncertain about investing for the future. Part of this is because the emphasis of the financial services industry is to convince investors that they can beat the markets through company research and stock picking and by getting the timing right. This results in high advisory and transactional costs paid for by the investor. Part of the problem lies with the inherent volatility of markets causing investors to feel greed when m....
Friday October 29, 2010 at 10:00am
In business cash is king. As accountants we talk about it all the time: what is cash flow like? who owes you money, how can you conserve your cash etc. But when it comes to personal finances and investment strategies the opposite is generally true.Cash is seen as risk free as there’s a perception that it cannot fall in value. Research by Finametrica (specialists in risk profiling) estimates that we are twice as concerned about losing money as we are about seeing an increasing return on our....