Investing
How can I keep track of my money?
You'll have your own account and log in so that you can view your valuations, which are updated every day.
Every six months we will also give you a valuation that is set against an agreed benchmark. This will enable you to track how your investments are going against the wider world. If this is not frequent enough for you we can send more regular valuations at no extra cost. Just let us know and we can organise this.
What is your performance record?
Every client's portfolio is different, but we have kept track of every recommended change to our portfolios since the begining of 2004. We have then applied this to Ifamax Balanced Strategy and benchmarked this against the APCIMs Balanced Portfolio. Please ask for further details on this and we will be happy to show you.
What is a benchmark?
In essence, a benchmark tells you how well your portfolio is doing against other similar assets. Early on, we recommend a suitable benchmark that is offered by the Private Clients Investment Managers or, APCIMs for short. This benchmark will have similar risk characteristics to the strategy that we have recommended for you. The strategy that we recommend you will be based on your attitude to risk, need to risk and ability to risk.
What do you think will be the next big thing to invest in?
This is otherwise known as fad investing. The Dot Com bubble, Spanish property, China, India, Commodities, Hedge Funds, UK property, are just some recent examples of fads. These trends come and go and our advice it to always avoid them. If you’re not sure, take a second opinion.
What investments should I avoid?
Anything that's a fad. There is always a fad because it sells newspapers, and some brokers like to bang the drum as well as it is good for their business. We’d also recommend you avoid active fund management. Active funds cost more, and selecting a fund that will outperform a given benchmark can only be down to luck.
What's the biggest mistake to avoid when investing for retirement?
Ignoring the long term effects of inflation. In 1975 a first class stamp would have cost 8p. Imagine you retired in 1975, right around the time the stamp was issued. And imagine your entire cost of living – the only thing you needed to buy ever – was the value of one first-class stamp. And what’s the price of a first class-stamp today? 65p. That is inflation for you!
The single biggest mistake people make is not taking into account the long term effects of inflation. ‘Riskier’ investments, property and equities, which are real assets should have more than quadrupled your income and capital over that same time period. ‘Secure’ investments, cash and bonds, carry a hidden risk. Their real value and purchasing power gets eroded over time. Planning a strategy to strike a balance between the two and diversify is essential for a financially comfortable retirement.
What are the biggest investment lessons we can learn from the past?
There are many lessons we can learn from the past, but here is what we consider to be the big six:
- Always consider the long-term effects of inflation on your investment strategy. Just because has been low for the last few years, don't think for a moment that it has gone away forever.
- Don’t try to time a market up or down, it's a waste of time. You’ll never get the right day, week or month, and if it did happen, put it down to luck. If you got the right year, give yourself a pat on the back and accept you were lucky. The point often missed is that you have to time the market twice - out, and in. The odds of getting that right are very slim.
- Making investment choices by how you feel at the time is probably the worst decision you could make. To prevent this from happening you should adopt a process and stick to it. Separate the head from the heart. Investing should be boring!
- Don’t chase past performance, it’s gone already. This is to some extent linked with the point above. Newspapers are full of stories where things have gone well for somebody else. Good for them, but the moment’s gone.
- Don’t let recent poor performance put you off, things change very fast.
- Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, a fully diversified portfolio covering several different asset classes should give you long-term success. The portfolios we create typically have more than 10,000 different investments.
What is an uncorrelated investment?
Uncorrelated is a word that is often used to describe two or more different types of investment that perform independently of each other. The idea is that even if one asset is going down in value, then perhaps the other might be going up because it works in a completely different way. So even during a period of poor returns overall you may be able to point to something that has proved positive.