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 for the last 20 years or so, and wanted some advice. He’s kindly agreed to me sharing his story for this article, but for the sake of privacy I’ve changed …
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 priced, predominantly passive, funds for investors to choose from on their platform. But with so much choice comes some tricky decisions. Which fund, or funds, should you choose? Which is …
The best Vanguard passive index tracker funds for UK investors Read More »
I’m starting to lose track of the number of people who ask (online and in person) what the best beginner investing books are. To collect my thoughts, and so that I’m able to send a link rather than having to explain each book every time I’m asked, I’ve compiled a list of my 5 favourites. …
I work as an investment manager, and a few years ago I had a boss called James (not his real name). His job was mainly portfolio construction, but he occasionally took client meetings and provided portfolio updates to some high net-worth individuals alongside the relationship managers. He had a vast repertoire of favourite sayings that …
So this is it. It’s times like these which separate the successful investors from the mediocre. The decisions you make now will be some of the most important in your investing career. These are the times when you decide what your lifetime investment returns will look like. Decisions made in times of crisis are orders …
If you cast your mind back to this post (Against International Diversification), we saw some legitimate, evidence-based reasons which might support not diversifying internationally. Specifically, we saw that cross-country correlations are high, and that correlations are likely to converge to 1 during a crash. But are these arguments good enough to justify heavily overweighting our …
International diversification: The evidence – Part 3 Read More »
In the previous post we saw that international diversification: Helps ensure one country’s drawdowns don’t affect your overall portfolio’s returns too much, Reduces risk through lower volatility, drawdowns, and vulnerability to Black Swans, Increases returns through minimising the volatility tax and owning the few countries which are driving returns. But that’s not all… Diversification reduces …
International diversification: The evidence – Part 2 Read More »
We owe a lot to the ancient Greeks. They laid the groundwork for a huge swathe of today’s society, including democratic government, philosophy, theatre, architecture, mathematics, jury-based trials, medicine, and the Olympics. But there’s one aspect of Greek culture which hasn’t managed to endure the test of time – its stock market. The Greek stock …
International diversification: The evidence – Part 1 Read More »
Given that I’m writing this the day after the UK left the European Union, a post on the perils of investing overseas seems appropriate. What better way to stick it to those straight-banana loving mainlanders than to take all our investments and move them back to our glorious island? Thankfully I won’t be opining on …
I recently attended a small presentation given by the CIO of one of Oxbridge’s college endowments. He was a typical economist – articulate and confident in his views, with some big-brand names on his CV and a reassuringly expensive suit (he must know what he’s talking about). In typical economist style, he also threw out …
