News & updates
News & Updates
Financial advice: what FT readers say
Personal chemistry is what's holding the advice industry together, reading between the lines of a recent FT survey of readers about their relationship (or not) with financial advisers and wealth managers. This is remarkable in today's technology-dependent world and in...
Brexit war games
This is my rather crude attempt at a Brexit route map, for the purpose of a bit of game theory. Brexit is no game but to a detached observer it presents a fascinating problem. To anyone with a particular objective, or skin in the game, game theory is an important part...
Breakeven year for equities – latest
This unfamiliar but telling exhibit measures the extent to which the QE-induced REAL equity risk premium has shrunk but is still much more generous than 'normal' (explanation below). This measure of the equity risk premium, measured against Index Linked Gilts, is the...
What’s on our dashboard?
The Government's Pension Dashboard project is suspected of sloping off towards the long grass. The earliest date had already been pushed out to 2019. We aim to beat that with an interactive dashboard for prospects (as a test drive) and clients by Christmas 2018....
Can companies tells us about Brexit impacts?
There appears to be a striking difference between UK share prices and the public statements that company CEOs are making. Public statements are much closer to the worst-case economic predictions associated with the Treasury and Remain supporters seeking to influence...
Engagement (with spending money) is everything
'Engagement' is no solution to the savings criris? Really? Are savings then totally unlike any other consumption good that sells itself on expected satisfaction or gratification? Aren't savings just satisfaction with a bit of time shift? Well, it was after all an...
Flat rate pension tax relief back on agenda?
The Treasury Committee's latest report on savings seeks to get back on the agenda the idea of a flat rate of tax relief for all. It's good to see the subject being aired against but the downside is that a lot of misconceptions about tax relief, its cost and...
Your house as a late-stage pension fund
Spendthrift drawdown or frugal drawdown? Two different angles on the problem of misjudging how much to spend in retirement, when people are dependent on drawdown from their own capital, have surfaced recently. Writing in FTMoney, Merryn Somerset Webb thinks they...
Fowler Drew differs from typical investment firms who seek ‘alpha’ for alpha’s sake, instead harvesting low-cost ‘beta’, building towards target outcomes that clients get to define. Their assumptions about how markets behave seem sensible and plausible to this non-expert client. The focus on outcomes helps us to understand what we are doing and why. It’s self-contained, neat and tidy and very suitable for busy lives.