Investing Features

With profits investments - zombies that won't die

Zombie funds are more properly known as closed with-profits funds. With-profits was once the investment world's darling. The apparently ingenious schemes, which use "smoothing" - holding back some of the profits in the good years to bolster returns in not so successful years - used to be regarded as among the safest forms of investment. Since the heady days of the 1990s, when with-profits schemes were providing record returns, the funds have been widely discredited for their lack of transparency, high charges, poor asset allocation, patchy performance, high exit penalties, the massive commissions paid to salesmen to promote them, and dubious practices such as the manipulation of bonus rates to make the funds more attractive to new investors.

Banks and builders: invest or avoid?

The crumbling house market has wiped the smile off property developers and builders, while banks struggle to preserve profit and liquidity ratios. Is this, then, a good time to invest in banks and builders or should you resolutely steer clear of bombed-out stocks that conceivably still haven't finished falling?

Winning investments in the face of the credit crunch

Are you among the sellers who believe that financial stocks are 'bombed out'? Do you reckon the 'credit crunch' will continue to bite big lumps out of the valuation of the country's major financial institutions or do you believe that this could be a one-time opportunity to buy into the major players at knock-down prices that will recover substantially over the course of the next couple of years? There are strong arguments for both sides.

Investment Quiz - Are you "A", "B" or "C"?

Like most human qualities, a person's investment mindset is not easily slotted into categories - human beings are far too subtle for that. But in the A-Z of investment, A, B and C could stand for Adventurous, Balanced and Cautious. If you had to line up behind one of those broad labels, which would you pick? In fact, do you even know which one you are?

May in the stock market - Bradford & Bungle, an accident waiting to happen?

It used to be the case that when one thought of Bradford & Bingley the image likely conjured up would be that of the two anonymous bowler-hatted gentlemen who used to get run-outs in its occasional TV ad campaigns. And for good reason as they represented safety and stability. Fast forward to 2008 and the image of a bowler-hatted Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy would be more appropriate, given the recent shambles witnessed at the specialist mortgage bank.