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Recently an All-Party Parliamentary Group for Intergenerational Fairness (APPG IIF) published a report which recommends the abolition of Inheritance Tax in its current form. Here, we look at main reasons leading to the publication of this report and take a look at the recommended changes to this deeply unpopular tax. Inheritance Tax (IHT) is a […]
Category: Financial Planning, Thought pieces
We make no apology for referring to this stock market trend again this year, but the circa 1% rise in the UK Footsie 100 Index on the first trading day of 2020 is potentially a very good sign for Investors. A study of the Index over the past twenty years found that in 17 of […]
Category: Business, Thought pieces
A Venture Capital Trust is a tax efficient, closed-end collective investment scheme which offers retail investors access to small unquoted, growth companies with generous tax reliefs to compensate for the higher risks involved. VCTs are listed on the London Stock Exchange. To compensate for the higher risk and illiquid nature of investing in VCTs, they […]
Category: Business, Thought pieces
Early last month the £2.5 billion M&G Property Portfolio Fund was forced to stop investors from taking cash withdrawals from the fund. This is an open-ended fund where sales of units by investors can result in the manager being forced to sell some investments to realise cash to meet those redemptions. The fund had seen […]
Category: Business, Thought pieces
Stock markets don’t care about what is happening today. They are a forward-looking discounting machine and are more concerned about the future. This can create a disconnect between prevailing news headlines and stock market performance. The last 12 months have been a case in point when it was easy to find lots of things to […]
Category: Business, Thought pieces
It is now more than ten years since the global financial crisis, a key trigger of which was a downturn in the US property market. Indeed, property has been associated with financial crises and recessions many times throughout history. Why then does the property market have the potential to have such an important bearing on […]
Category: Business, Thought pieces
Nothing goes on forever in financial markets. For all the noise and industry fashions; whether it’s the importance of geographical weightings, economic statistics or portfolio risk measurement driven by index construction, they all come and go, reverting to the mean and overshooting in the other direction. The one thing an investor can rely on is […]
Category: Business, Thought pieces
Bond investors are living in a topsy turvy world. The global financial crisis presented central banks with unprecedented challenges which were met with extraordinary actions. A decade on, we can now see that these measures saved the global economy from deflation and economic depression. However, the unintended consequence of these extraordinary measures was that they […]
Category: Business, Thought pieces
“Old Age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you have to start young”. These words of wisdom from former US President Theodore Roosevelt may resonate with many of us as we face retirement—especially as that timeframe is getting longer. When the first UK state pension came into effect in January 1909, […]
Category: Business, Financial Planning, Investment management, Thought pieces