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I am ending 2010 still undecided about whether the recent indifferent performance of the UK stock market represents the full extent of a setback that one should buy into - [...]

In the past year or so, my own inclination - and the advice I have had from my IFA - has been to 'buy on the dips' in the equity [...]

Is the gold price too high? At a conference a few years ago, I made a speech on the merits of gold bullion as an investment and joked that, just [...]

Experience has taught me to be wary of the stock market in the September/October period, particularly if it has enjoyed a good rise over the summer months. The best example [...]

Following your instincts is often the surest route to well-timed buying and selling. Sometimes, my instincts have let me down - as in the case of my brief venture into [...]

One of the hardest lessons for investors to learn is when to cut their losses. Like many, I have learnt this the hard way, with plenty of practice. I should [...]

Cash has been king for the last few weeks. Fortunately, I have found myself with quite a lot of it of late. I recently consolidated two pension schemes that I [...]

Is cash the best asset to hold in times like these? Cash earns next to no return at present, but at least there is no risk that it falls in [...]

My portfolio sometimes takes me to unlikely places. Chard, the bullion dealer I use regularly, is based in a suburb of Blackpool, between a Chinese takeaway and a chemist. Aside [...]

For a few years, my portfolio has been based more around asset allocation and passive investing than active stock picking. So far, this method has worked well, producing positive returns [...]

The past month has been something of an experiment in managing my portfolio. I have spent four weeks in Spain, partly on holiday and partly for work-related reasons. My connection [...]

John Lee +28 per cent The adage 'there's no such thing as a free lunch' proved true with my New Year visit to the Ladbroke Arms - the flagship gastro-pub [...]

Over Christmas and New Year, I often indulge in a bout of portfolio reshuffling, to take account of anticipated risks and opportunities in the year ahead. This year has been [...]

By the time my next column is published, on the second Saturday in January, I should have been able to quantify the performance of my portfolio in 2009, including my [...]

Ihave been focusing on emerging markets as a possible investment opportunity, although my track recordhas not been good. One investment in Carpathian, the eastern European property investor that was formerly [...]

My Portfolio Quarterly round-up John Lee Having achieved a 19 per cent total return in the year to end-August, the continued strength of markets has propelled my portfolio up 32 [...]

Icheerfully admit to preferring my stock market investments in passively-managed form these days, and to spending more time on getting the right asset allocation. This is simply because I find [...]

Does the extraordinary rise in share prices in recent months mark the start of a new bull market, or simply a colossal rally in an ongoing bear phase? Given the [...]

Having reported a depressing 42 per cent fall in my portfolio last year, I am pleased to say that, to date, 2009 has delivered a 19 per cent gain - [...]

It was Winston Churchill who said, of America, that it 'could be counted on to do the right thing, but only after it had exhausted every other alternative'. Picking the [...]

What has turned out to be a protracted process of pension fund administration is now largely complete. So I have finally been able to analyse my precise exposure to different [...]

My last two forays into the market - investments in Avarae Global Coins, the fund listed on the the Alternative Investment Market (Aim), and in the iShares Sterling Corporate Bond [...]

Nick Louth I have been fortunate to have ridden the furious market rally that started in March, ending May with a 20 per cent gain on the year so far. [...]

Other than setting up the nuts and bolts of a drawdown scheme for my main pension fund, in the past few weeks I have taken a break from thinking about [...]

Two of the principles of investing are always to expect the unexpected, and never to be too dogmatic about one's view of the market. I've had to employ both in [...]

Reluctant as I am to attempt to score points off such an eminent publication, I noted with interest that The Economist, a sister publication of the FT, recently carried an [...]

My portfolio management activities have taken a back seat in the past two weeks, in favour of some serious pension-related number crunching. Like many people, I have taken a fairly [...]

Ireturned from a two-week holiday in Egypt over Christmas to find that the performance of my portfolio had improved somewhat in the last two weeks of 2008. That was a [...]