Sound Financial Group Blog

In previous blogs I have droned on about the costs to invest and how in the UK they are, in the main, too high. Despite constant press coverage, charges appear to show little signs of reducing and so I make no apologies for starting my 2012 blogs with yet another about investment charges, but this time in relation to ‘advice’.

So roll out the predictions for 2012...

The banks are in trouble again, but this time for poor investment advice. Which? Has found that only 13% of the banks that they investigated gave suitable investment advice...  

ISAs to the rescue? “ISA ISA Baby”... The very annoying Halifax ad’ on TV has thankfully long gone, but in terms of retirement planning ISAs have a key role to play...

Live Long, Live Poor? The media has been busy telling us recently how many Billions have been wiped off the value of UK shares and how this will be disastrous for pension funds and those soon to retire. But there are much bigger problems out there...

As human beings we are programmed to behave in ways that help us survive, not to make good investment decisions…

Comparison between the self control attributed in life (note to self to leave the chocolates alone and do more exercise) and the self control and discipline required when investing or more specifically the returns received from investments.

Consideration given to the performance of the active fund management industry as per the '[analysis of returns produced by Thankes River Multi Capital's 'consistency ratio' with some below-par statistics.

is something that many believe they have mastered, but in reality few appear to have achieved. In our experience being a successful investor involves the following 6 disciplines:
1.    Faith in the future – The rise in human progress and the ability through capitalism to combine skilled labour with natural resources and intellectual capital to build great companies that innovate and change our future.

2.    Patience – Resisting the desire to react to news and world events and translate this into some form of action that rather than add to the returns of a portfolio, will detract from it (due to turnover costs for example and the inability to ‘market time’).