It’s time to break out the birthday candles as Shares marks 25 years since its first issue hit the newsstands in September 1999.

I’m just the latest custodian of this publication, having had the pleasure of editing Shares for a just under a year, and while there has been an enormous amount of change over the last quarter of a century both internally and in the broader financial markets, the one constant is you, the reader.

All our efforts, past, present and future, are about making investing easier for you. Whether by educating you on the principles behind investing, keeping you updated on the latest trends and themes or generating ideas to help you build your own portfolios.

In this anniversary edition we introduce a new section: My Portfolio. To kick things off, Martin Gamble will explain the basics of portfolio construction and management in a three-part series.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to investing, and after that it’s over to you to discuss how you manage your own investment portfolios. You can read more about how to get in touch in Martin’s article and the reward on offer for doing so.

You may also see some other small changes to this issue – very much evolution rather than revolution – including giving greater prominence to our Great Ideas section where we showcase our two best investment ideas of the week.

We are also planning some tweaks to our website to make it more useful and user-friendly and I’ll keep you posted on these developments in this column. We’re always keen to hear your feedback, positive and negative, and any suggestions you have for potential article topics or areas we should cover. You can get in touch at shareseditorial@ajbell.co.uk.

One of the best calls we ever made in the magazine was on fast fashion business ASOS (ASC). It was flagged at just 4.5p in March 2003 when the idea of ordering clothes online was very much in its infancy.

At their all-time high in the late 2010s the shares had increased 1,679 times to more than £75, meaning a hypothetical £1,000 investment in 2003 would have been worth nearly £1.7 million.

However, you can never rest on your laurels in investing and ASOS is now worth just a fraction of its peak market value as industry trends, costs and the cost of borrowing have all moved against the company.

A lesson we can all take moving forward is to keep on top of our best ideas and when it might be time to change our mind.

‹ Previous2024-09-19Next ›