magazine archive
magazine archive
Funds
Join the 20% club
Thursday 03 Aug 2017Like a number of investment platforms AJ Bell Youinvest offers a list of ‘favourite funds’ to help you narrow down your selections from the thousands of options available to you. There are 72 active and passive funds to choose from, all selected with the help of investment consultant Square Mile,...
Funds for all market conditions
Thursday 27 Jul 2017Long/short funds consist of two separate components. There is the ‘long’ book that contains the holdings that the manager expects to deliver the most upside, and the ‘short’ book that consists of the shares that they think are most likely to fall in value. Using derivatives such as CFDs allows the...
Does a fund need more than one person to run it?
Thursday 13 Jul 2017T wo heads are better than one, the old adage goes – but when it comes to investing in funds, it could be more of a case of ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’ in terms of the people looking after your money. There are more than 2,000 funds available for UK investors to put their money into and each...
Funds that pay dividends every month
Thursday 06 Jul 2017There are approximately 450 open-ended funds that pay dividends monthly. The majority invest in short-term money market instruments or different types of bonds, but there are also plenty of multi-asset mandates, as well as property and equity funds. Given the wide degree of choice, it is perfectly...
Four funds for mainland Europe exposure
Thursday 22 Jun 2017It’s no wonder European equities are in demand. Other parts of the world have major issues to resolve. The US is beset by political turmoil in the shape of its maverick president Donald Trump, the UK is facing the fall-out from the general election and the start of Brexit negotiations and Chinese...
How ethical is your ethical fund?
Thursday 15 Jun 2017Almost £13bn of UK investors’ money is in ethical funds, according to the latest figures from trade organisation the Investment Association. It’s a tiny fragment of the £1tn that is invested in UK funds in total but, for those who make the decision to invest ethically, it is important that the...
Property funds come back from the Brexit brink
Thursday 08 Jun 2017One of the areas worst affected by the EU referendum was the UK property sector whose performance is dependent on the health of the economy. Many of the real-estate investment trusts (REITs) suffered sharp falls in their share prices, but confidence has improved due to the resilience of the...
How fund managers flex muscles with takeovers
Thursday 01 Jun 2017It has been a bumper year for takeovers and we’re not even at the halfway point in the calendar year. By April more than $2 trillion worth of company mergers and acquisitions had already been announced across the world. Research by Dealogic reveals there were 125 deals worth more than $1 billion in...
Which fund managers excel at communication?
Thursday 25 May 2017We believe every fund or investment trust should provide crystal clear information on how they look for investments, what they choose and how they manage their portfolio. Sadly the quality of communication is variable across the industry. We will therefore use this article as a way of championing...
Global funds don’t always live up to their name
Thursday 18 May 2017Global funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are billed as a great way to access lots of companies around the world, but their level of diversification isn’t always as high as you might expect. One of the most common benchmarks used by tracker funds and ETFs is the MSCI World index. It is tracked...