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 [...]
Enrolling with the times: How the workplace pension hike could affect you March 13, 2019 Since the government began phasing in auto-enrolment almost seven years ago, 10m people have now joined their workplace pension scheme. By encouraging Brits of all ages to save for retirement, the auto-enrolment system was designed to stop the UK from hurtling head-first into a pensions crisis. So far, it’s been a success. Even more people are [...]
Karren Brady and a lesson on the duties of directors March 13, 2019 Several months after Sir Philip Green became embroiled in a highly publicised scandal, Karren Brady resigned as chair of his retail empire. Despite allegations of harassment and discrimination made by staff against Green, Brady initially intended to remain with Taveta Investments, the holding company of Green’s Arcadia Group. She cited her duty to employees as [...]
How the arrival of the World Wide Web has changed the mortgage market March 12, 2019 In 1989, the Swiss physics laboratory, CERN, was buzzing with information but it had one big problem: ideas, data and knowledge held by the lab was stored across incompatible computers. A young scientist, Tim Berners-Lee, envisioned creating a unifying structure for sharing information across its computer systems. He wrote a proposal for a linked information [...]
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 [...]
Investing in firms that ‘do good’: too good to be true? March 12, 2019 | City Talk BlackRock is aggressively launching products with high environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings. The New York City-headquartered global investment management corporation’s CEO, Larry Fink, recently predicted that assets under management in the ESG category will grow from the current $25bn to $400bn in 2028. Investing in good corporates is intuitively appealing: who doesn’t want to [...]
The secret to being more likeable on first dates and job interviews revealed March 12, 2019 | City Talk People who need to make a good impression on dates or in job interviews should concentrate on communicating the hard work and effort behind their success, rather than just emphasising their talent, new research from Cass Business School has found. In Impression (Mis) Management When Communicating Success, published in Basic and Applied Social Psychology, Dr [...]
Savers cut pension withdrawals amid market volatility and Brexit uncertainty March 11, 2019 Savers have responded “prudently” to Brexit uncertainty and market volatility by cutting pension withdrawals. Ahead of the fourth anniversary of the introduction of pension freedoms, an AJ Bell survey found that regular annual withdrawals were on average 4.7 per cent of the fund value – a third lower than 12 months ago. Read more: With £9.2bn [...]
