Last week I was speaking to a colleague who was reviewing their pension and had seen the term ‘convertible security’ but didn’t know what it meant. A convertible security is essentially just a type of investment that can be ‘converted’ into another. For example, a convertible bond paying 5% could come with an option to […]
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Browsing the headlines this morning, I spotted an article from an Australian source talking about how one million property owners are about to default on their mortgage payments. Admittedly, I’m not 100% certain how many people are in the Australian mortgage market, but one million defaults sounds like a significant volume to me. The key
A friend of mine was recently contacted by a fine wine salesman. The pitch was fairly straight forward. In addition to buying wine to drink, individuals can also create investment portfolio of fine vintages. Wine is a finite product for which demand is currently outstripping supply. The great chateaus of the world only produce so many
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Cash flow, or the ability of a business to generate cash, is one of the most important factors for success in business. With interest rates at rock bottom levels, access to cheap capital has rarely been more available, but successfully deploying that capital to generate cash is the real measure of a business’s success. A
The markets have been increasingly volatile over the last few months. After an extended period of low volatility, this has caught some investors off-guard, with many piling into ’tipped’ stocks without examining the fundamentals of the company and consequently being surprised when they suffered a sudden drop in value as volatility picked up. Being a
A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about an on-going crisis in business that is being caused by the Big Four accountancy firms. Recent failures of auditors in the UK have left investors like myself with an increasingly strong feeling that the reports we receive are of no real value in determining how a
The Big Four accountancy firms; KPMG, Deloitte, EY and PwC are the four largest auditors of modern businesses. They also happen to have overseen the major corporate disasters experienced by Tesco and Carillion whilst declaring these companies to be fit to trade and properly financed. Sadly, despite these disasters, there seems to be a closed
In a world growing ever faster and more complex, are you prepared to adapt your way of living to keep moving forward? Being able to think critically, analyse and situation and then take action sounds simple, but when facing a barrage of emails, phone calls, meetings, and face to face conversations, are you able to
In addition to monthly and quarterly financial reviews, once a year, I take the opportunity to conduct an annual ‘super report’ on my finances, covering everything from account balances to performance against benchmarks and my financial forecasts to setting my strategy for the next twelve months. As part of this exercise, I measure a number
Reader Question: How much of my assets should I keep in cash? Read More »
As an investor who is primarily focused on receiving income from my investments, I am aware of the dangers of falling into a ‘yield trap’. After several years of actively managing a portfolio of investments, I have become better versed with looking beyond the initial headline yield of an investment and learning to assess the
International Women’s Day on the 8th March was an opportunity to raise the profile of women’s issues and celebrate the contribution they make to society. Since a fairly young age, I’ve been interested in personal finance; in a recent survey, I rated my financial knowledge as 8 out of 10, indicating a high level of
Earlier this month, I was talking to a friend about financial literacy and they were telling me that they felt ignorant of so much of what was available to them regarding their finances. They’d set themselves some basic goals – they want enough money to be able to provide a good education for their (as
A reader recently wrote in asking whether I use stop losses during trading. For those readers that aren’t aware of what a stop loss is, it essentially consists of an order to your broker to sell a listed share if it reaches a certain price (usually only in the event of a fall in price
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One of the biggest challenges that small businesses face is getting in front of their customers. Last week, I was chatting to a contact who was interested in my public speaking experience and wanted to know how I’d made a success of it. The truth is that it was entirely word of mouth contacts! Despite
Earlier this week, I was talking to a gentleman about letting out property, when I was presented with a barrage of vitriol about how “landlords are all parasitic leeches on society”. He proceeded to reel off a whole stream of examples of how he’d been slighted as a tenant (many of which I could relate
