Financial Conduct Authority proposes investment platform exit fee ban March 14, 2019 The City watchdog has proposed banning exit fees on investment platforms as part of a package to improve the switching process for consumers. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) also mooted a rule that would allow customers to switch platforms and remain in the same fund without having to sell their investments in a bid to [...]
Spring Statement 2019: How investors can profit March 14, 2019 | City Talk By Jemma Jackson from interactive investor. There were no bunnies in the chancellor’s hat, but here are the ways investors can benefit this spring. As predicted, Brexit uncertainty torpedoed any chance of good news for the UK’s savers and investors in Chancellor Philip Hammond’s Spring Statement. We hear there’s a ‘deal dividend’ of £26.6 billion, [...]
All the world’s a sound-stage March 13, 2019 | Sponsored Johnny Hon loves a show and he loves a stage. Unlike most globe-trotting international investors, he also finds time to invest in them. Hon, the founder and chairman of venture capital business and angel investor the Global Group, is a showbiz impresario, acting as an executive entertainment producer as an enjoyable sideline. UK-educated Hon is [...]
The poker player teaching investors to learn to accept uncertainty as a fact of life March 13, 2019 | City Talk Annie Duke is an American professional poker player turned business consultant. Her 2018 book Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions when You Don’t Have All the Facts aims to help people feel better about uncertainty – something of a fact of life for investors – and so make better decisions. Duke starts her book by [...]
ii winter portfolios 2018-19 deliver mega profits March 13, 2019 | City Talk Four months into this six-month strategy and both our winter portfolios are thriving, writes Lee Wild. Finding a trading strategy that works 100 per cent of the time is the Holy Grail of investing. We’re not claiming to have found it here, and seasonal trading is not for everyone, but there is a statistical anomaly backed [...]
Standard Life Aberdeen scraps co-chief executive structure March 13, 2019 Standard Life Aberdeen has scrapped its co-chief executive structure, the investment firm announced this morning as it reported a dip in profits and assets under management (AUM). Keith Skeoch has been appointed sole chief executive and Martin Gilbert has been moved to vice chairman of the company, dissolving the structure that was agreed following the [...]
Enrolling with the times: How the workplace pension hike could affect you March 13, 2019 Since the government began phasing in auto-enrolment almost seven years ago, 10m people have now joined their workplace pension scheme. By encouraging Brits of all ages to save for retirement, the auto-enrolment system was designed to stop the UK from hurtling head-first into a pensions crisis. So far, it’s been a success. Even more people are [...]
How the arrival of the World Wide Web has changed the mortgage market March 12, 2019 In 1989, the Swiss physics laboratory, CERN, was buzzing with information but it had one big problem: ideas, data and knowledge held by the lab was stored across incompatible computers. A young scientist, Tim Berners-Lee, envisioned creating a unifying structure for sharing information across its computer systems. He wrote a proposal for a linked information [...]
Quilter boosts profits despite challenging market conditions March 12, 2019 Wealth management firm Quilter reported increased profits last year despite challenging market conditions. The figures Shares rose six per cent this morning as the firm reported that profit before tax was up 11 per cent to £233m, in its full-year results to the end of December 2018. Read more: Quilter blames market for fall in [...]
UK bank shares: A pre-Brexit view March 12, 2019 | City Talk Some UK bank shares have made massive profits for shareholders, but how should you play the sector now? It’s been a few weeks since the last of the big UK-listed banks published results for 2018, and share price performance since has been varied. Brexit, of course, has played its part and, with some lenders up [...]