Expert Wealth Management

If you were asked who you thought was the world’s best investor, you might well say Warren Buffett, the Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. That would not be an unreasonable answer, given he is worth US$ 71.5 billion today , give or take a few million for daily market movements! He is also often held up by those in support of ‘market beating’ strategies as a shining example of their creed. Over 40,000 avid followers attended the 2018 annual shareholders’ meeting, referred to by some as ‘Woodstock for capitalists’ and his style of investing is known as ‘Buffettology’, on which numerous books and articles have been penned.

Dominic and Marcus had the pleasure of meeting Jan-Carl Plagge a few months back at an investment conference and thought that he would make a wonderful speaker for our ongoing Virtual Afternoon Tea webinar series. In this hour-long session Jan-Carl shares some of his incredible knowledge on the topic of environmental, social […]

The global lockdown continues to throw up important lessons. In particular, it’s a useful time to test one’s thesis about investing and retirement planning. I’ve always thought that a good retirement strategy should hold up, not just in good times, but especially in bad times.

One of the positive consequences of the current lockdown is that it does provide the opportunity to revisit a few of those old tasks, hobbies and pleasures that always seem to get put on the back burner in our busy lives. For some that might be picking up a new or re-reading a favourite book. Here is an example of the latter: in the early 2000s Nassim Nicholas Taleb published a wonderful book titled ‘Fooled by Randomness’ with the descriptive sub-title ‘The hidden role of chance in life and in the markets’.

Many of those reading this short note will have, at some time, travelled down to Devon for a lovely summer break amongst the rolling fields, moors and beautiful beaches of this somewhat remote county. Only a few will have ventured into Plymouth, the famous naval seaport and home to Sir Francis Drake (that famous Elizabethan pirate who so vexed our Spanish friends by stealing their gold) and the site of the departure of the Mayflower with the pilgrims on board heading to America 400 years ago this year. Even fewer will know that it was the place of an amazing insight into the powerful nature of crowds, which provides us with a wonderful word picture of how markets operate.

We couldn’t agree more with Paul Samuelson that an investment portfolio should aim for steady growth rather than taking risks for the chance of making gains, however exciting or tempting that may be. 2019 saw a continued trend for the UK retail market to adopt the same approach, with net outflows from active funds of £3.1bn and net inflows to passive funds of £21.5bn for the year to date at the end of October.

It does feel as if the world is at an inflection point: step up to the challenges of global warming and other non-sustainable pressures on the Earth’s resources today or let our children and grandchildren reap the havoc of the melting ice caps; sea water level rises; deforestation and a decline in biodiversity; desertification and the potential social and migratory upheaval that will accompany it.

Persistently skilled fund managers are a very rare commodity, hard to identify in advance and hard to live with over time. Anecdotes and examples of great managers are often used to justify active management, yet even some of the truly ‘great’ managers have failed to live up to their billing. Like the […]