Reading Time: 4 minutes First published in Vista Autumn 2021 Markets are hard to interpret at the best of times, and these are not the best of times. Some things you can explain, some you can’t, and some are just weird. Fans of clean narrative and clear cause and effect ought to stick to physics or engineering. Today’s markets … More Meaning from Mixed Messages
Reading Time: 5 minutes Do we stop to question received wisdoms as often as we should? The stories, words, metaphors and concepts we use to describe things do matter. They define the cast of characters on (or off) the economic stage, perhaps implicitly relegating important areas to marginal or non-existent roles, without even thinking about it . Adjectives and … More What if everything you were taught about economics & finance was wrong?
Reading Time: 7 minutes Is inflation coming? How will my portfolio do, what assets help against inflation? … More Asking the wrong question on inflation
Reading Time: 8 minutes answering some common arguments ESG or responsible investing … More The Good, the Bad and the false. Addressing 9 arguments against ESG
Reading Time: 3 minutes There are a great many ways to succeed in investing , some involve doing very little (eg owning a passive index) others involve a lot more. I reckon you have at least 4 broad categories: 1. Seeing what others don’t (eg Growth investing: buying Amazon or Apple ) 2. Finding what others can’t (eg private … More Finding what others can’t vs seeing what others don’t
Reading Time: 5 minutes What returns should I expect from my investments? Easy question, difficult answer. A lot of books and many, many column inches have been taken up debating that one. Of course, the most defensible answer is “no-one knows for sure”, but this isn’t helpful. For financial planning we need a forecast to start from and we … More The million dollar question
Reading Time: 9 minutes Hell of a week for mega-cap stock earnings in the US. You’ve got 5, trillion+ dollar companies growing at startup type rates. It’s remarkable stuff. Usually, as a passive investor one of the great things is not needing to have a view on individual stocks, you have the luxury of just shrugging while knowing you … More Oops they, did it again …
Reading Time: 8 minutes Why Net Zero is the new investment target of choice as asset owners think more about climate, externalities and sustainability … More Your New Investment Target: Zero (Net Zero)
Reading Time: 3 minutes Looking at individual stocks gets wild … It might surprise you that the following stocks have all yet to surpass their March-2000 dot-com era highs (at the time of writing. Admittedly 2 are getting close): Intel Cisco Pfizer AT&T General Electric It gets even weirder when you focus in on Cisco – despite being in … More Five surprising stocks in a 20-year bear market
Reading Time: 6 minutes So look I get that no-one needs another piece debating the 4% rule. (I did write a piece doing exactly this last summer though, showing that the last decade of low rates had “broken” the 4% rule – in the UK, similar conclusions would hold in the US). The follow-up to that piece was surprising- … More How Much Would You Need to Retire In Your 40’s?
