I recently finished Mark Blyth’s book – Austerity: The history of a dangerous idea. Blyth is professor of International Political Economy at Brown University. It concerned me that I didn’t understand how the world was going to get itself out of the overindebted state we are in. It seems economists don’t have any particularly clever […]
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I am quoting and borrowing some thoughts from Robin Angus – author of the November 2016 Personal Assets Trust PLC newsletter: “A sea-change in politics? ‘There are times, perhaps once every thirty years, when there is a sea-change in politics. It then does not matter what you say or what you do. There is a
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Nov 11, 2016 | Stafford Thomas Passively managed funds may not offer the best returns in a difficult equity market As far as investment nuggets go, this one’s an oldie and has almost always been a goodie: you can’t go wrong with an index tracker fund. This has long been the cry from the passive
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Exchange Traded Funds have taken the investment world by storm over the last decade and are even proposed by Warren Buffet as the low-cost investment of choice for retail investors. The development of ETFs arose on the back of index tracker funds (which they are not). They are sold as a simple, safe, low cost
Beginning in the Summer of 1999, every two months, Britain auctioned off 25 tonnes (804,400troy ounces) of its long-held gold reserve at prices below $300 an ounce (remember goldpeaked at $800 an ounce in 1980). Its stated goal was to gradually replace 415 tonnes of goldwith more fashionable monetary reserves, such as euros, yen, and
