ii winter portfolios 2018-19 deliver mega profits March 13, 2019 | City Talk Four months into this six-month strategy and both our winter portfolios are thriving, writes Lee Wild. Finding a trading strategy that works 100 per cent of the time is the Holy Grail of investing. We’re not claiming to have found it here, and seasonal trading is not for everyone, but there is a statistical anomaly backed [...]
Standard Life Aberdeen scraps co-chief executive structure March 13, 2019 Standard Life Aberdeen has scrapped its co-chief executive structure, the investment firm announced this morning as it reported a dip in profits and assets under management (AUM). Keith Skeoch has been appointed sole chief executive and Martin Gilbert has been moved to vice chairman of the company, dissolving the structure that was agreed following the [...]
Quilter boosts profits despite challenging market conditions March 12, 2019 Wealth management firm Quilter reported increased profits last year despite challenging market conditions. The figures Shares rose six per cent this morning as the firm reported that profit before tax was up 11 per cent to £233m, in its full-year results to the end of December 2018. Read more: Quilter blames market for fall in [...]
UK bank shares: A pre-Brexit view March 12, 2019 | City Talk Some UK bank shares have made massive profits for shareholders, but how should you play the sector now? It’s been a few weeks since the last of the big UK-listed banks published results for 2018, and share price performance since has been varied. Brexit, of course, has played its part and, with some lenders up [...]
River and Mercantile ‘focused on conduct’ following City watchdog investigation March 11, 2019 River and Mercantile has said it will focus on conduct as it moves to reassure investors in the wake of an investigation by the City watchdog. The Financial Conduct Authority fined the asset management firm £109,000 last month after it was found to have broken competition law, and former portfolio manager Philip Rodrigs was sacked [...]
Investors increase alternative asset portfolios due to market volatility March 11, 2019 Investors are increasing the percentage of their portfolios dedicated to alternative assets as volatility hits mainstream markets. One in four private investors have 20 per cent or more of their overall portfolio allocated to alternative assets such as private equity, infrastructure and real estate, according to research by Connection Capital. Read more: Ares Management injects [...]
This investment clock says what assets to buy and when March 11, 2019 | City Talk By Tom Bailey from interactive investor. It’s inevitable that the unremitting global economic cycle will impact stock markets, but when? The economist Paul Samuelson once joked that the stock market has predicted nine of the past seven recessions. But while the over-reactive nature of equity market investors and their poor predictive powers ring true, there [...]
AI’s success story still has a few missing chapters March 11, 2019 This article is not written by robots – we promise – but apparently the day when they could be is already upon us. We have just finished reading about the GPT-2 text generator which, according to this Spectator piece, “not only does text analysis and augmentation, but generates highly sophisticated content”. “It can effectively write articles,” [...]
Alfa Financial Software up 24 per cent and could go higher March 10, 2019 | City Talk By Graeme Evans from interactive investor Worth only a fraction of its £1bn peak, Alfa Financial is seriously undervalued, says this pro investor. Since taking the tech sector by storm in 2017 following its near-£1 billion IPO, days like today haven’t come around too often for Alfa Financial Software (LSE:ALFA). A year ago, its shares [...]
14 shares for your ISA March 9, 2019 | City Talk By Richard Beddard from interactive investor. Richard reveals three rules, codified in his Decision Engine, that reduce the stress of trading. Every five weeks I share my Decision Engine’s ranking table, which orders the shares I follow by the scores I have given them. The scores are a measure of confidence a company will turn [...]