Investment Courses
You don't need to be a genius to invest! We offer some introductory courses to get you started, and we've kept the price of these very low. We also offer intermediate courses if you have some investment experience but want to hone your skills. Click on the button to see the catalogue.
Live Q&A
If you support us on Patreon on the exclusive access tier you get to take part in our regular live Q&A sessions when you can see what other people are asking and ask me your own questions. You can also see recordings of previous Q&As. Click on the button to go to our Patreon page.
Power Hour
You can speak to me one-to-one and ask me anything you like about investing by clicking on this button.
Robo Investment
Which is the cheapest robo adviser in UK: Robo investment is democratising wealth management, and reducing fees by automating the process of investment and matching risk appetite to portfolios. But how cheap are robo investments? We compare fees for six of the most popular robos.
Interview with Adam French: Adam is CEO UK & Founder of Scalable Capital. He discusses Scalable's sophisticated risk-based approach to investing, why he built a system he could recommend to his Mum, how his system simulates thousands of possible futures to tune each client portfolio individually to dodge loss-making outcomes and catch a brief foray into the Quantum Mechanics of car keys (sorry - Ramin's fault).
Interview with Shaun Port: Shaun is Chief Investment Officer (the brains!) behind Nutmeg and leads its investment team. Hear Shaun's approach to top-down investing, how humans can add value to the investment process, his views on what drives markets, whether the US stock market is expensive and the US high yield rally can continue, why he thinks US inflation linked bonds and Emerging Markets are attractive, how the Brexit process will affect.
Active vs Passive vs Robo Funds: Which is Best?: Fintech has created a third way: robo funds. How does this compare with traditional active and passive funds and which is best?
Top Down Views
Here's our view of which asset classes are likely to do well in today's environment. Note that this is not a recommendation to buy a particular stock or bond, it's an overall top-down view by asset class. This is really a way of helping you craft own views rather than impose ours, we are actually hoping you will disagree with us and tell us why!
Is UK Property a Bad Investment? The UK housing market has trounced inflation for much of the last two decades, but we think that may be about to change. Rising interest rates, lower real wage growth and the prospect of a Government correcting the supply-demand imbalance are set to weaken the prospects for UK house prices.
Rates are rising, it's time to reduce duration: UK government bond yields almost tripled over three months. Is the bloodbath over? We don't think so. This video helps you understand bond duration, what drives the yield curve, how Trump's policies will affect the curve and how to check fund duration with examples.
Exchange Traded Funds
An Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) is a way of tracking an entire market very cheaply. You can buy share ETFs (to track stock indices such as the FTSE 100 or the US S&P 500), bond ETFs (to track government bonds, corporate bonds, inflation-linked bonds) commodity ETFs (to track gold, oil) or even multi-asset ETFs that mix up asset classes in one package.
Exchange Traded Fund Flaws Exchange Traded Funds are an extremely popular and often cheap way of getting exposure to a wide variety of markets from shares to bonds to commodities. But there are some caveats, five of which we explore here.
Which ETFs provide inflation protection? An alternative to buying single inflation-linked bonds is to buy a fund of inflation-linked bonds. Why would you do this and what are the risks and benefits?
Income Investments
Survey of Income ETFs: Cash is earning less than inflation, so how what income is available through Exchange Traded Funds. In this video, we compare the income, risk and fees of 60 funds.
High Yield Credit-Is it junk: The US high yield credit market is on fire, and after such a strong run investors are piling in. So we dig into the drivers of high yield credit and decompose its yield into its risk factors to see why it has rallied so hard and to gauge whether the party is over.
Time to reduce duration: UK government bond yields almost tripled over three months. Is the bloodbath over? We don't think so. This video helps you understand bond duration, what drives the yield curve, how Trump's policies will affect the curve and how to check fund duration with examples.
Review of STHS: Source PIMCO Short-Term High Yield ETF: We review a high-income exchange traded fund, discussing its attributes, its risks and how to find its current yield. We discuss how using short-term bonds and a currency hedge reduces the volatility of this fund.
Calculations
Here we get down and dirty in the numbers. Hmmmm...
How to annualise returns: As an investor you will need to compare returns over different time periods and to compare apples with apples we usually annualize returns. But how do you convert a daily, weekly or monthly return into an annual return? Watch this video to find out.
What is the Best Way to Measure Risk?: Knowing return is only half the story, risk matters too. But which measure is best: volatility, Value at Risk or drawdown?
Reviews
Review of Nutmeg-Opening an account: Does Nutmeg live up to its brand of simplicity when it comes to opening an account? How does the process work? How's the support? We tried it out.
Review of Scalable Capital-Opening an account: Scalable Capital is a rapidly growing robo-fund that is attracting lots of fintech venture funding capital and has been selected for CNBC’s exclusive "Upstart 25" list. But how do you open an account? What questions do they ask? How's the support? We tried it out.
Review of MoneyFarm-Opening an account: In our survey of UK robo investors, MoneyFarm came out cheapest for an investment of £10,000 or less. But what's the service like? We show you the step-by-step process of opening an account.
Review of MoneyFarm-Opening an account: In our survey of UK robo investors, MoneyFarm came out cheapest for an investment of £10,000 or less. But what's the service like? We show you the step-by-step process of opening an account.
Review of Wealthify-Opening an account: Wealthify is unique as a robo-investor because it has a very low minimum investment of £1, is based in Cardiff and has a female CIO. But what's the service like? We show you the step-by-step process of opening an account.