Avoid a hasty decision about the CGT rate May 26, 2010 THE new Lib-Con coalition didn’t waste any time after the election to show it is serious about lowering the UK’s enormous public debt. And it looks like a hike in capital gains tax (CGT) is on the cards in a bid to raise much-needed revenue. So what does this mean for investors? Individual stocks, contracts [...]
THE TIPSTER May 26, 2010 TESCO has pulled back from its high of 454.9p at the end of April but has also bounced back from its decline to the 38.2 per cent Fibonacci retracement level. Look to purchase below £4 with a stop at £3.85. WorldSpreads offers a rolling spread on Tesco of 397.2p–398p. There’s been no shortage of volatility [...]
LISTED PRODUCT NEWS May 26, 2010 GOLD DRIVES SOURCE ETC JUMP Since the launch of its Exchange-Traded Commodities (ETC) platform in April last year, Source, the ETF provider, has seen its assets soar to more than €500m (£427m), making it the second biggest collateralised ETC provider in Europe. Most of Source’s products are US Treasury Bill-secured ETCs listed on Xetra but [...]
Principles and not rules are the way to encourage business to be ethical May 26, 2010 TOMORROW, the Financial Reporting Council will announce the first part of its new code of conduct for corporate governance. It is a welcome step towards ensuring that businesses behave in a responsible way, but more is needed. It has been striking in recent times that the public and policymakers have blamed business’s failures on ethical [...]
Embrace the alternative May 25, 2010 A RECENT survey by Mercer, the consultancy, found that nearly 5 per cent of UK pension funds and 14 per cent of European pension funds are looking to increase their allocation to fund of hedge funds. And well they might – over the past 10 years the HFRI Strategic Index, which measures the performance of [...]
CONTAGION IN EUROZONE IS AN OPPORTUNITY May 25, 2010 James Abate, PSigma AM In the investment world, the impact from Greece’s fiscal crisis on the euro (and related concerns about sterling) has led to a stronger US dollar boosting returns for non-dollar based investors in US funds. In spite of this, UK investors’ global portfolios are still significantly underweight the US, relative to the [...]
EU’s Maginot line policy is a fudge May 25, 2010 DICK TURPIN MANAGING DIRECTOR, ARTEMIS SO THE $1 trillion European bailout just isn’t working. So ein Mist, what a dung-heap, mutters German Chancellor Merkel, lugubriously. But investors know that Europe has long excelled at self-delusion. For example, in 1929 somehow the French convinced themselves that the Nazis could be kept out by a wall. As [...]
FUND MANAGEMENT NEWS May 25, 2010 AGRIBUSINESS FUND COMES ONSHORE A new onshore Global Agribusiness Fund by First State Investments will aim to deliver low-risk, long-term returns to UK and European investors from a portfolio of between 25 and 75 stocks. It has announced its intention to take advantage of what it sees as “a combination of rising demand and constrained [...]
Rollercoaster forex markets are here to stay May 25, 2010 IN THE current environment it can be difficult to judge where the financial markets are going even one month ahead let alone 10 years, but that is just what UBS, the investment bank, has done. It published its FX mega trends 2010-2020 report earlier this week, and the overriding theme is volatility. The bank notes [...]
Thai currency flourishing despite political turmoil May 25, 2010 WHEN a country falls into political turmoil, it normally spells bad news for both its markets and its currency as worried investors pull out until the situation has calmed down. Not so Thailand. Admittedly, the South-East Asian country has suffered sharp falls in its stock market – the market itself was closed for two days [...]