I am a fan of Terry Smith but I wonder how many others in the fund management business are, given his knack of puncturing some of the carefully-developed myths that help to keep the rest of the industry going. His latest offering. a “sustainable” global equity fund, is a clever and well-judged attempt to highlight the flaws in the way that many other funds in this fashionable sector are in practice put together.
Category: Old articles
Governments are dumb about property
I have recently started a series of interviews with leading figures in the property world for a new specialist publication The Property Chronicle. This month’s subject is David Lewis, a well-known property developer whose interests over a 40-year career included three listed companies and a range of private ventures. He looks back on his highs and lows, gives his views on current market valuations and expounds on his view that Governments rarely make a success of their interventions in the property market. The first interview in the series was with Professor Andrew Baum of Oxford University, a leading property academic (yes there are such things) and a pioneer in property market research. He also has a fair bit to say about the challenges of valuing property in a low interest rate world.
Another cheap and cheerful milestone
While active fund managers are getting active, as they have to do to justify their existence, the announcement that Vanguard, the pioneer of low cost
Japan’s stock market has huge upside potential
The best investment decisions are almost always those that feel most uncomfortable at the time they are made. George Soros says he gets terrible backache when running his biggest positions. ‘If it ain’t hurting, it ain’t working’ is a good motto to put on your computer screen. Those who think Japan is an excellent home for their money at the moment (as I do) are very familiar with this phenomenon.
Skin in the game? Terry Smith is putting £115m where his mouth is
November 2016 Terry Smith is in the news again. Not for being a Brexiteer — though he’s been committed to that cause ever since he
In praise of moving averages
What do you want the stock market to do for you? Make short-term speculative gains, or grow your wealth over a period of years? My answer would be: ideally both — but the wealth part is by far the more important of the two. The-question is: what can a wealth-seeking investor do to minimise the risk of losses along the way? Here’s one technique that might help.
Jonathan Davis 