magazine archive
magazine archive
Feature
Your favourite funds: Are they reliant on just a few holdings for their returns?
Thursday 17 Aug 2023We have touched before on the issue of ‘concentration risk’ or having too many eggs in one basket and the benefits of a diversified portfolio. The recent decision by the Nasdaq stock exchange to reduce the weighting of the biggest tech stocks has once again raised the question, can you have too...
Why investors in US shares may have to lower their growth expectations
Thursday 17 Aug 2023With investors’ attention fixed on inflation and interest rates an economist at the US Federal Reserve argues investors should prepare themselves for a sharp drop in net income growth over coming decades. A new research paper by Michael Smolyansky based on data from Compustat shows that net income...
How to analyse Unilever in five easy steps
Thursday 10 Aug 2023Following our look at Microsoft (MSFT:NASDAQ) , this is the second instalment in the Shares mini-series aimed at arming readers with an easy-to-use five step framework which can be applied to most popular types of company. Hopefully the structure we’ve provided will allow you to quickly assess if a...
Beat the heat: how to invest in companies and funds fighting climate change
Thursday 10 Aug 2023Huge swathes of Europe, North America, Asia and Africa have endured boiling conditions this summer, with the majority of scientists pinning the blame for the planet’s exceptional heat and rain, as well as wildfires in countries such as Greece and Canada, on human activity. Data from the EU-funded...
How packaging companies are positioned for the shift away from plastic
Thursday 10 Aug 2023If we think about what packaging companies do, probably the first thing that comes to mind for most of us is getting a brown cardboard box or envelope through the post from Amazon (AMZN:NASDAQ) with its tell-tale smiley logo. Yet e-commerce is just a small part of the overall business of firms like...
Magnificent Seven: five things we learned from their latest earnings
Thursday 10 Aug 2023Big tech stocks have been flying this year as investors scramble to get in on the ground floor of what could be the next technological revolution. In the first half of the year the Nasdaq Composite chalked-up 33% gains as tech’s ‘Magnificent Seven’ stocks soared. Analysts put the surge down to...
UK stock performance is improving: time to get on board?
Thursday 03 Aug 2023If you blinked, you might have missed it, but there was a flicker of life in the UK stock market in July. The FTSE 250 index of medium-sized companies jumped by almost 4% in one day, its best showing for over a year. The FTSE 100 also ended the month at its highest level since May. In and of itself...
Analyse a stock in five easy steps
Thursday 03 Aug 2023Stock research is a lot like buying a car. You can base a decision solely on technical specifications, but it’s also important to consider how the ride feels on the road, the manufacturer’s reputation and whether there is enough space. Equity investors can choose from thousands of stocks – nearly 2...
Frustrated with a share price going nowhere? Here are reasons why they can trade sideways
Thursday 03 Aug 2023It can be frustrating to watch share prices trade sideways for months. Nervous investors might question that something is going wrong with the investment case. However, that isn’t necessarily the case and there could be several reasons which explain lacklustre share prices. This article examines...
Is active fund management a waste of time?
Thursday 27 Jul 2023For the last 10 years active fund managers in the UK have been under the pump. In that time the amount of money held in passive index tracker funds has doubled, from 9% of UK industry assets to 21%, according to Investment Association data. Last year retail investors withdrew £25.7 billion from all...