Philosophy (from the Greek, ‘filosofia’) means love of wisdom and concerns itself with the study of existence, values, reality and knowledge; all essential stuff. As we know, the likes of Aristotle, Plato and Confucius made immense contributions to human thought and civilisation. Strangely, these giants of the ancient world instantly came to mind the other day as…
The demise of Neil Woodford’s empire has been truly astonishing and it’s not just its founder that faces scrutiny. The spotlight is now on the Financial Conduct Authority, together with Woodford’s Authorised Corporate Director (ACD), Link Fund Solutions. The FTSE 100 quoted financial services group, Hargreaves Lansdown, also has questions to answer regarding the closeness…
Mark Twain remarked that “history doesn’t repeat but it often rhymes”. He’d probably never been to Argentina. A year ago, it issued $2.75bn of debt at a yield of 7.9% in a capital raising that was 3.5x oversubscribed. The duration of this bond (its life) was 100 years; a detail that Gillian Tett, writing in…
Investors will be well aware that world stock markets have been rattled over the past couple of weeks. Chatter about a mini crash came naturally after Wall Street shed 6% in a single session. Various culprits were rounded up; rising U.S. Treasury bond yields, simmering inflation, Oxfam, the reduction of central bank stimulus and the…
So, Donald Trump will soon be sitting in the Oval Office. The BBC’s period of official mourning still has a week to run but from Silicon Valley to Islington (via Hollywood), the liberal left remains in a state of shock; if only the ‘deplorables’ couldn’t vote, Hillary would be President with Beyoncé and Jay Z…
The French fund manager, Jean Marie Eveillard, states “a good value (i.e. patient) investor aims to buy investments at prices that are less than they are truly worth and accepts there will be periods of short term pain. It is one reason why there are so few good value managers. It is not just psychological;…
The Bank of Japan has just cut its overnight interest rate from 0.1% to minus 0.1% while Sweden’s Riksbank took its lower still from minus 0.35% to minus 0.50%. The Japanese have therefore joined the club that the Swedes already belonged to, along with the Danes, the Swiss and the European Central Bank. Even U.S.…
Cast your mind back to those halcyon days when storms were nameless. Your dustbins were not only emptied regularly but actually returned to whence they came. Potholing was a weekend leisure activity rather than a description of your drive to work and it was possible to walk the length of the high street without being…
For investors, risk and return are Siamese Twins; you can’t obtain the latter without the assumption of the former. As a firm, we are occasionally chided (in a friendly way, it should be said) because when it comes to the deployment of capital, we prefer to focus on what might go wrong rather than hope…
Forget what they say, it’s what they do that matters. A point reinforced by the tale of the Reverend Paul Flowers. A man whose credentials should have been impeccable now has questions to answer regarding historic expenses irregularities, consorting with rent boys and buying crack; there are also drugs allegations. Multiple ironies abound here; the…