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Bargains You Could Not Pick Up

As I predicted might happen in an earlier blog this morning, there was a panic when the market opened as the pound was already down substantially. But if you tried to pick up some bargains, it was damn difficult. Retail service providers who provide electronic quotes to brokers seemed to stop providing them, and just logging into some retail platforms proved very difficult. Even if you managed to log in, the service was so slow that it was impossible to do ...

Brexit Result Impact and Tesco AGM

The result is in, and the people have spoken. We will now leave the EU, unless of course there is some more re-negotiation or other fudge which would probably require some U-turns by politicians. They are of course adept at finessing such manoeuvres so don't be surprised if the outcome is not quite as simple as it might first appear. The pound has already fallen substantially (I am writing this just before the stock market opened). Is that a disaster? Not quite ...

Whitbread AGM Report – More Fun Than Lloyds?

The Whitbread Annual General Meeting took place at Church House Conference Centre in Westminster on the 21st June. This was one of the few FTSE-100 AGMs I have attended where the Chairman seemed to pay good attention to the views of private shareholders rather than considering it a tedious 2 hours that had to be suffered. In addition shareholders (and I am a new one) could learn a great deal about the strategy of the company and its affairs from the meeting. ...

Cash or Shares. Which is Better?

An interesting article in Saturday's FTMoney (18/6/2016) by Paul Lewis suggested that you might be surprised to learn that if you had invested £10,000 in a cash account in 1998, you would have done better than investing in a FTSE-100 index tracker. It's surely odd for the Financial Times to persuade their own readers that cash is better than equities because a choice of cash might mean they no longer needed to read the FT - they could just use a ...

Where Bonds are Concerned, Trust No-One

The news that the holders of Lloyds bonds (ECNs) have lost their legal battle in the Supreme Court reinforces the message that when it comes to investing in bonds, you should trust nobody - not the issuer of the bonds, your friendly stockbrokers and wealth managers who advise you, or the FCA to protect your interests. The bondholders won their case initially in the lower courts, that Lloyds should not be able to force redemption of these bonds at par. But after ...