What really caused the FTSE 100 “wobble” City Talk Investment commentators clearly dusted off their thesauruses before they spoke to the media to describe the behaviour of financial markets over the last week. "Tumble", "pullback", "pause for breath"? "Shake-out", "setback", "wobble", "plunge"? "Breather", "sell-off", "rout", "correction"? Or perhaps you would prefer a good, old-fashioned "opportunity"? The explanations for the 'sell-off' have been equally as [...]
The unprofitable reality of tobacco stocks City Talk Chestnuts may be roasting on an open fire – at least on the speakers of every shop we have visited since October – but here our focus is smoke. More precisely we will be considering its continuing disappearance as more and more people quit cigarettes – and what this could mean for tobacco companies and [...]
The problem with bitcoin’s own ‘P/E’-style valuation measure City Talk As the perceived worth of a single bitcoin criss-crossed its way around the $10,000 (£7,455) mark for much of last week, on The Value Perspective blog, we revisited articles from 20 June 2017 and 20 October 2017, when one bitcoin respectively bought you $2,779 and very nearly $6,000. Each time our primary concern was there [...]
‘100% chance of recession’? … the risks of making investment forecasts November 29, 2017 The future is impossible to predict. Okay, there may be a certain irony here in that regular visitors to our blog, The Value Perspective, can be fairly certain they will read a line like that from us every month or so. Yet the only reason we keep saying it is because all sorts of experts [...]
There is no perfect time to invest, so seize the day October 20, 2017 For those who have a mind to find one, there is always a reason not to invest in the equity markets and yet, remain forever in cash and over the longer term you are likely to be materially worse off. Everything in life, as Albert Einstein knew, is relative – even the threat of nuclear [...]
Three alternative top tips for new (and old) investors October 4, 2017 September is the month when cohorts of fresh-faced young graduates descend upon the City of London to begin careers as professional investors – usually as analysts charged with coming up with stock ideas for portfolio managers. Schroders' Value Perspective team offers three pieces of advice that, while important, are unlikely to have been mentioned in [...]
The decline of farmers and the demise of the ‘knocker-upper’ – history’s lesson on automation September 12, 2017 For a striking example of the impact technological advances can have on whole industries, consider the fate of the humble knocker-upper. During the 19th century and a surprising portion of the 20th, these folk would, for a minimal fee, wake you up in time for work, tapping on your bedroom window with a suitably long [...]
The chart that could keep investors in ‘low-risk’ stocks awake at night June 27, 2017 For years it has been an undisputed fact of investment that people tend to prefer having big-name brands in their kitchens, bathrooms and elsewhere – yet this could now be changing. Ian Kelly, blogger and fund manager, explains the significance. Among the various qualities we look for in an investment, on The Value Perspective blog, [...]
Can this chart really show what will happen next to the stock market? May 26, 2017 Société Générale’s Albert Edwards, a market commentator that we on The Value Perspective blog respect very much, recently wrote his weekly strategy note on the dangers of stifling dissent and the comfortable ‘groupthink’ that can come about as a result. On the first page was the following graph and – in a show of dissent [...]
‘Hot iron’ trial by ordeal: a 13th Century lesson for investors January 30, 2017 Trial by ordeal was an ancient way of determining someone’s guilt or innocence by making them undergo a painful, often potentially lethal, experience. If they survived unscathed – or at any rate survived – they were deemed to be innocent of whatever charge had been levelled against them and, by the Middle Ages, the [...]
