What makes a good financial prophet? Predicting investment returns is akin to make weather forecasts. While you might get a sense of what might happen over the next few days, further out is totally impossible and the real experience can be totally random on any given day.
The Divided States of America Leaving aside the fact that the US election has been topical for the last few months the reason why I often focus on all things American is due to the scale of its economy and its knock on impact on worldwide financial activity and, by …
We all know the phrase of “not putting all of your eggs in the one basket” but when it comes to investing especially if an investor has not experienced poor investment returns in a while (or possibly, even ever) this approach gets consigned to the category of applying to other …
From my experience, most investors are very trusting of whoever is advising them about where to place their money for a long term return. While a growing number of such investments are placed into international UCITs the majority of such monies are placed in the unit funds of either life …
7,271 – 520,000 – 11,000,000 In my newsletter at the start of June I cautioned that as lockdowns were eased globally the following weeks would tell a lot in terms of ongoing infection figures. As the World enters its sixth month of Covid-19, the numbers above represent respectively the daily …
“Should I Stay or Should I Go?” Some weeks ago we mentioned the dilemma that politicians worldwide faced on when and how to open up their economies. Those of you reading this update that are old enough to remember this song from The Clash in 1982 might also remember the …
Stock markets are now at all time highs. Who would have thought that we would be saying that after the Global Financial Crisis back in 2008. Surely equity markets are now toppy? Many investors who went to cash around then have been too frightened to come back into the market …
The virus persists Boris Johnston has returned to work this morning and on first glance appears to be a far slimmer version of himself from a few weeks ago, evidence, if it was ever needed, of the severity of the personal impact of Covid-19. As at the time of writing …
What is R0 and why is it important? R0 is a statistical representation that epidemiologists use to describe how an infectious disease spreads through a population. Put simply, the average sick person, in a totally receptive population, must be able to get at least one other person sick (R0 = …
Escaping from the Lockdown In the context of global health and economic history, I can see that the Covid-19 lockdown economic impact was initially viewed as a short term problem, albeit one with serious ramifications. The realisation of growing infection and mortality rates has taken hold on political leaders. We …
