Expert Wealth Management

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.

Climate change, the habitat destruction of palm oil farming, ocean plastic, zero contract hours, child labour and income inequality are amongst the many challenges that we face in the world. Our attention has increasingly been drawn to the issue of ‘sustainability’ by campaigners such as Sir David Attenborough and Greta Thunberg. Most of us – in our heart of hearts – know that the human race is doing a pretty poor job at present of balancing the claims of the present on the world and its resources against the claims of future generations.

For many investors – particularly those in retirement - the question ‘how long is long-term?’ could also be translated as ‘I’m getting on a bit, so should I still be investing in the stock market?’. When is comes to systematic investing – that is to say, capturing specific market risks in a disciplined and rules based manner – a subsidiary question might also be ‘should I still own value and small cap stocks, as their excess returns, relative to the market, can take some time to come through?’.

The world of financial planning can be complex and technical. It's sometimes easy to lose sight of why having a financial plan is so important! We recently came across this amazing video of Doris Day, singing in the 1950's and felt it was an apt reminder of what we're trying to achieve in the Expert Wealth family. Have a look!

Human beings are not well wired to be investors. Not only are we not very good with percentages - often accepting seemingly small percentage charges as immaterial - but we also grossly underestimate the impact of compounding these deductions from our portfolios over time.

Trump’s belligerence, China’s debt mountain, Putin’s malevolence, not forgetting Brexit and the prospect of a far-left leaning Labour Government: All this turmoil inevitably leads to concern over investment portfolios. Let's discover how well-structured portfolios are capable of riding out any storm.

Despite long-term, deeply embedded memories that summers are generally warm and sunny, nothing is certain. In fact, long-runs of unpredictable summer weather are the norm, not the exception. The last few weeks have seen wonderful weather, but to make the point we still hark back to the fact that the last time this happened was in the summer of 1976, 42 years ago!

The aim of this report is to demonstrate how the performance of EWM investment portfolios compares to that of other investment management groups. To do this we use Asset Risk Consultants (ARC) Private Client Indices.

A recent article in the Guardian is the latest indictment of the Standard Life GARS fund. The fund has underperformed on virtually all imaginable benchmarks over the last three and five years.

We feel that by recording our interactions with you, we'll be able to increase our focus and engagement with what really matters... Your life goals.