How to avoid the effects of soaring higher education fees November 4, 2010 AS RECENTLY as February it was reckoned that it costs an average of £200,000 to raise a child to the age of 21 (excluding private school fees), while parents living in outer London shelled out £220,000 on each of their children. As if this wasn’t enough to keep parents and would-be parents awake into the [...]
The three musketeers of start-up accountancy November 4, 2010 ACCOUNTANTS are supposed to be boring, right? Well that’s what I thought until I met Lynton Stock, Susan Hutter and Bobby Lane. They have taken their number-crunching skills and mixed in some entrepreneurial spirit. In 1988 Stock and Hutter were working at a big accountancy firm. They had risen from the ranks, become partners and [...]
PRICES NEED SCIENCE NOT GUESSWORK November 4, 2010 SERIAL ENTREPRENEUR AND AUTHOR PRICE is well known to be the single most powerful determinant of profit, so why continue to use guesswork more than science? What is the right price for your product and service? Do you really have an educated idea? Have you gone to the trouble of testing and checking different prices, [...]
Fears over consumer climate send retailers and FTSE down November 3, 2010 BRITAIN’S top share index closed lower yesterday, with retailers weak as Next posted falling sales, while banks gained ground after Lloyds Banking Group poached Santander UK’s head as its new CEO. Investors were reluctant to take big positions ahead of a Federal Reserve decision on further monetary policy easing later yesterday. Markets are pricing in [...]
Wall St ticks up as Fed provides relief November 3, 2010 US stocks ended a volatile session modestly higher yesterday after the Federal Reserve detailed a plan to breathe new life into the struggling economy. Both the Dow and Nasdaq closed at levels not seen since 2008 while the S&P ended at a six-month high. The gains were preceded by an erratic session in which equities [...]
The man who is helping investors to take the smartest risk possible November 3, 2010 FOR somebody who has just stepped off a night flight from New York, Michael Thompson is remarkably cheery and animated when we meet in the Canary Wharf offices of Standard and Poor’s (S&P). Perhaps it’s the large coffee he admits to having drunk earlier or maybe it’s because he has become a more regular transatlantic [...]
Time to reverse global imbalances November 3, 2010 THIS has been a pivotal year for global economies. But if 2010 is the pivot then next year will be the fulcrum. 2011 is likely to be the year for developing economies to crowbar the debt-laden west out of its economic woes. Archimedes of Syracuse once boasted that if he stood in the right place [...]
A bonanza of fresh, cheap funds for the retail investor November 3, 2010 HSBC is planning another series of emerging market exchange traded fund (ETF) launches as the price war in ETFs intensifies. Retail investor confidence in using funds tracking more exotic indices is growing and HSBC is cranking up its aggression with planned launches in the first half of 2011 tracking the MSCI India, MSCI Emerging Asia [...]
Turkey’s star is still rising for ETF investors November 3, 2010 WITH a near-record 18 IMF bailouts, Turkey might not seem like a smart investment to the untrained eye. But in just a decade the country has gone from a basket-case to a fully-fledged bull market. At this rate the country is tipped to grow faster than China in the next decade. News like this has [...]
G20 PUTS FX MARKETS IN SHARP FOCUS November 3, 2010 DIRECTOR OF THIRD PARTY DISTRIBUTION, ETF SECURITIES CURRENCIES are currently very much in focus. Bizarrely, however, many investors shun direct currency exposure because they view currencies as being more volatile compared to other asset classes. This leads investors to play currencies through their asset allocation decisions rather than trading the foreign exchange markets directly. Indeed [...]