
Beware graphs bearing outperformance
“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes” – Beware the Greeks bearing gifts – Virgil, Aeneid (II, 49) The more articles I begin with a Latin aphorism,

Why do we buy expensive investments?
Having just opened a Native American jewellery store in Arizona, the owner was having trouble selling some of her turquoise pieces. Despite the jewellery being

Is investing a zero-sum game?
If you win at blackjack in a casino, you take someone else’s money. If you lose, someone else takes your money. There’s no wealth being

How much money is in the world?
Figuring out how much money is in the world is an interesting question. Not one which has any real practical value, but it’s an interesting

Why do stocks go up?
It sounds like a pretty basic question, doesn’t it? We all know that, in the long run, markets rise over time. But answering why stocks

Is investing gambling?
About a dozen or so friends from school and I have a WhatsApp groupchat which has now been running for over 10 years. It started

My 5 favourite books of 2020
Although I managed to avoid catching coronavirus in 2020, I did catch another virus, of sorts. Its symptoms included: Increasing levels of claustrophobia as my

The best Vanguard bond funds for UK investors
Who would’ve thought people were so interested in bonds? Certainly not me. After this post: ‘The best Vanguard passive index tracker funds for UK investors’,

What’s the best crash protection for your portfolio?
“What goes up when stocks go down?” is one of the most important questions an investor will have to find the answer to. But the

Average savings by age in the UK: Savings statistics
This brief post explores the average amounts in savings for UK households by age groups. It also looks at the average amounts in UK pension

Should you invest in gold as a UK investor?
As a UK investor myself, I struggle to find useful analysis aimed at sterling investors at the best of times. Almost all of it is

Is dividend investing a good strategy?
A few years ago, one of my friends asked me to meet with his father to discuss his portfolio. He’d been managing his own portfolio

The best Vanguard passive index tracker funds for UK investors
If you’re an investor based in the UK, you’ve probably heard of Vanguard. They’re a hugely popular fund manager, and offer a slew of attractively

A summary: Is passive investing causing a bubble?
To those who have made it to the conclusion of this series, I salute you. We’ve covered a lot of ground in the last eight

Why passive investing is increasing market efficiency
This is the eighth part in a series examining the evidence behind the claim that passive investing is causing a bubble. For the previous part,