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Keeping up with the science Investment planning is now more of a science than an art. Technology, ever-increasing investment opportunities and stricter regulation have all encouraged a more scientific approach. But has your investment strategy kept up pace? Investment planning and asset allocation is a multi-stage process. The actual execution of investment transactions is virtually […]

New data shows how far UK dividends fell last year, but projections for 2021 suggest the declines are nearly over.   In January 2021, ‘Link Asset Services’ published its latest findings covering the final quarter of 2020 and the year as a whole. The headline figure was that total dividends fell by 44% over the […]

As the pandemic enters its second year, what have we learned? The World Health Organisation declared Covid-19 a pandemic on 11 March 2020, coincidentally the day that Chancellor Rishi Sunak presented his first Budget. At the time, the Chancellor announced a £12bn stimulus to counter the impact of the pandemic. By November, the Office of […]

Taking some time to start planning for 2021/22 now can be worthwhile.     While there is often a focus on planning for the end of the tax year, much less attention is paid to the start of the tax year. The lack of an obvious deadline is probably one reason – deadlines tend to […]

Interest rates matter. At the personal finance end of the spectrum, they determine what you earn from bank deposits (virtually nothing at present) and what interest you pay on your mortgage (about 4.4% if you are paying the average standard variable rate (SVR), but much less for most other loans). In the investment and commercial […]

The average deposit paid by first-time home buyers jumped by £10,000 in 2020. When the pandemic took hold in the first half of last year, it looked as if the housing market was heading for a fall, if not something more dramatic. There were problems regarding viewing properties, arranging surveys, organising removals – you name […]