Month: August 2018

Thursday, 30th August 2018

What they don’t print on Weetabix boxes….

If you want to build wealth, the Warren Buffett blueprint is one way to do it….

You save a fair proportion of your income, invest wisely in a portfolio of solid companies at value prices and hold your investments long term….

As those companies develop and increase profitability, the value of their respective stock will rise….

The value of your portfolio will grow too. One day, you will wake up a wealthy man….

That’s the theory. It worked in practice for Buffett. It has also worked – to varying degrees – for other long-term investors….

If you’ve got 50-, 40- or maybe just 30-years ahead of you, following Buffett’s formula can pay big dividends….

If you fancy having a go, make a note in your 2058 diary to let us know how you got on….

• An appealing proposition….

Of course, life is not ABC. It seldom runs like precision clockwork….

If you don’t have decades ahead of you, and assuming you still want to make a sizeable pile, you need to find a way of making big market returns quicker….

And that’s what makes trading the markets – stocks, currencies and commodities – an appealing proposition to many would-be fortune builders….… Click here to read more

Thursday, 23rd August 2018

Is this the spark that sets the world alight?

For most folk, what happens in Turkey might as well be happening on Mars….

I must confess that I don’t tend to think about Turkey very often myself….

And even when I do, my thoughts are more Bernard Matthews than banks of the Bosporus….

What happens in Turkey – the world’s 17th largest economy as measured by GDP – doesn’t seem to have much impact or relevance on my day-to-day life….

What happens in Turkey seems to me to have little effect or consequence out in the wider world….

But that might be about to change….

What is unfolding out in Turkey right now might well create waves that are felt worldwide….

• Cheap credit rules….

The Turkish lira has fallen significantly in value and has been doing so for some time….

The national currency has lost more than 40% of its value over the last 12-months. It’s a full-blown crisis. Make no mistake….

There are lots of complex reasons behind this dramatic plummet in value. Most of them I don’t fully comprehend. Others I cannot begin to explain….

But there are a couple of things I do understand….… Click here to read more

Wednesday, 15th August 2018

It’s all over! Or is it?

The Daily Mail’s Alex Brummer was in no doubt. He said this:

‘The Bank of England has signaled the financial crisis is finally over with the decision to lift interest rates to the highest level in a decade….’

You can imagine the sheer relief that swept through the Gibson household once Brummer had issued his resounding all-clear….

At last! Thank goodness! The ‘emergency’ that began a decade ago and took interest rates to the lowest level in the Bank of England’s 300+ year history is finally over….

The Bank has raised the base rate of interest all the way from 0.5% to the dizzying heights of 0.75%….

Things can finally get back to ‘normal’….

Or can they?

What about the financial crisis that lies just around the next corner?

• Pockets of risk….

It was last September when the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee (FPC) described the burgeoning consumer credit market as a ‘pocket of risk’….

The consumer debt pile in Britain at that time amounted to £200 billion….

The FPC issued some stark warnings that, if the economy took a turn for the worse, rising defaults on that consumer borrowing could result in High Street banks losing up to £30 billion….… Click here to read more