Features

The future of buy-to-let

If you were a member of the 'sceptic camp' 10 years ago and bet that buy-to-let would fall apart at the seams, you may be thinking it's time to collect your winnings. Last week, property investment outfit, Inside Track that hosted free seminars selling expensive courses up and down the country on how to become a property millionaire complete with flesh and blood case studies went into administration. Its managing director, Tony McKay blamed, "continued and sustained difficulties arising from the credit crunch". But whichever way you look at Inside Track's dubious property tactics they clearly couldn't stand up in an anything below red hot market.

Investment Commentary: Sell in May and go away? No!

The $64,000 question is whether we should treat this as a suckers' rally and take advantage of it to bale out. At least one experienced fund manager of my acquaintance believes this to be the case. He has been investigating taking out an out-of-the-money put option on the Footsie. Will I be joining him? Despite my concern that the credit crunch still has some unpleasant tales to tell, my answer must be - not on this occasion.

April in the stock market - Fred gets shredded

If the banks were strapped with cash in April the same couldn't be said of the oil majors - Royal Dutch Shell and BP - both of whom posted record profits as the price of crude headed north of $115 a barrel. Royal Dutch Shell made profits of £3.9 billion in Q1, while BP posted £3.38 billion - up 48%.

To rent or to buy? That is the housing question

With the housing finance markets going through a dysfunctional period, many would-be home owners have turned to renting while they wait and see whether it is safe to take out a mortgage and dip their toe in the home ownership market. Even the government admits, "We can't know how bad it will get," according to briefing notes accidentally displayed by Housing Minister Caroline Flint.

BIG MONEY little effort

It should be the simple goal of every investor to concentrate their cash in assets as they rise in value and to stay well clear when they're falling and in my opinion, a basic strategy that aims to force you to do just that by measuring price momentum is all you need. During my career running my own hedge fund management company up until my retirement at the grand old age of thirty-three, my staff and I tested numerous strategies for participating in the markets. Most of these were concentrated upon market price movements as we found pure fundamental analysis too subjective to include into a disciplined methodology.