There was a time when if you wanted to invest, you had to go to a stockbroker and they would place the trades for you. They earned a commission on placing the trades, so it was only worth their while making sizable investing. In other words, you had to be rich to invest. Current Day […]
2022 has been a horrible year for investors. Inflation continues to be high, interest rates have been increased agressively, Russia invaded Ukraine and energy costs have skyrocketed. All of these factors point towards a recession in the next few months/ next year. Year to date, the market is down -9.70%. It is understandably a hard […]
We frequently hear people comparing investing to gambling. When in fact, they are the opposite. When you gamble, your greatest chances of coming out on top is in the near term. The longer you gamble, your chances of beating the house decrease further and further. With investing, the chances of losing money in the short […]
Ask any financial advisor if you should borrow to invest in a basket of equities and 99.9% (0.1% margin of error) of them would tell you no. There are loads of reasons why you shouldn’t. The cost of entry for investing in equities is very low. You can just save up a small amount and […]
When I do a risk profiling questionnaire with clients with DataPoints, the first topic in the results that we talk about is Investing Confidence. Making decisions about investing requires you to have confidence in the decisions you make. You need to be confident that you invested in the correct assets and it will come good […]
In the book, How much is enough? by Arun Abey & Andrew Ford, they lay out the four golden principles of investing. They are quite simple and easy to follow. They are not new either but sometimes we lose sight of them, especially when FOMO takes over and we want large returns instantly. Principle 1 […]
In 1992, the top 10 holdings in the S&P 500 were: General Electric Exxon AT&T Wal-Mart Coca-Cola Philip Morris Shell Merck Proctor & Gamble General Motors 10 years later the top 10 holdings were: Microsoft General Electric Exxon Pfizer Wal-Mart Citigroup IBM Intel Cisco System In 2012, the top 10 holdings were: Apple Exxon Google […]
I had a financial planning meeting with Bob last week. Going through his investments, he noticed they were up 7%. He was both delighted and surprised. How could this be with everything that is going on in the markets? Bob looks at his portfolio once a year when we update his plan. For the other […]
Two questions: 1. Imagine that you are richer by €20,000 than you are today and that you face a choice of two options: 1. Receive €5,000; or 2. A 50% chance to win €10,000 and a 50% chance to win nothing 2. Imagine that you are richer by €30,000 than you are today and that […]
There is a lot going on in the world at the moment. Inflation is out of control. Central banks are raising interest rates to try to combat it. This will reduce spending and growth, leading almost certainly to a recession. China is in lockdown again so the supply chain is impacted again. And there has […]