What affects your investment planning

Did you ever wonder why some people seem to be doing better in the investment arena than you? Or why certain people seem to always lose or consistently win? The truth is that there are very few ‘superstar’ fund managers, like in any industry there are those that are the best and they totally outshine the millions of others who do the same job but never to the same degree.

If we were to look at some of the factors that may have an effect on your investments you can quickly identify that there are those which you cannot control, and therefore can only hedge against, and those that are within your control for which you are responsible and must consider, these will now be considered:

1. Being too conservative: If you stayed only in the safest areas of the market you would actually lose money over time as the effect of inflation grinds down your investments. This would be because the deposit interest rates would likely not give positive returns when you …

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The fallout of the credit crunch

In this post we will examine some of the likely fallout from the credit crunch. What we have seen developing in the world has shown that the international aspects of finance as well as the magnification of leverage are at the root of many of the problems. There has never been a more exciting time to be alive in the finance industry and while some pundits cite the Great Depression in every second sentence I believe that while the numbers and percentages might thwart every record hit, that the actual real economy fallout will not rival that of the Depression era.

Regulation: Regulation is likely to feature much more heavily in business, in particular in financial services, last week Patrick Neary called on all Stockbrokers to give the Financial Regulator an audit of their firms, they can do the audit themselves but they must get it done ASAP in order to demonstrate that client funds are fully protected.

In the mortgage and personal finance field we are likely to see increased regulation, …

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How To: Get a better rate from your bank

Banks are not lending as freely as they used to and for many borrowers obtaining credit is harder than ever, the people who already have mortgages are also feeling the pinch as lenders raise the margins on variable rates – which they have every right to do!

Tracker mortgages are now gone from the market and we are left instead with a confounding maze of LTV based Standard Variable Rates. This means you get a rate with no guarantee, set by the bank, and its based on the loan to value of your property. This may leave many feeling that they have no option and if you have a defeatist attitude one could argue that it has been imposed rather than earned!

However, last week a member of our team decided they would do something about the rate they were getting and they called the bank and tried to negotiate a better rate, they were rebuffed several times and eventually they got past the business prevention unit and were …

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Banks taking a 'Stake' in property deals.

There were several articles about this in the press recently, mentioning banks taking an ‘interest’ or ‘equity stake’ in certain developments. Something that the articles failed to talk about was the underlying cause? When property was booming banks were not taking an equity stake, they would finance the deals but they didn’t tend to get in on the action, so why is it that during the downturn they would start to do this?

There are two ways of looking at this, one is the way that a lender would have you believe, the others is to aim for fair comment on what is an objective view.

First of all though, it is important to look at how debt affects liquidity, if a bank is seen to have any problems people start to withdraw money, that’s not speculation, that’s fact, it happened to Northern Rock, IndyMac and several other banks since. So there is no part of the market that is fully convinced when banks say that ‘we are …

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Banks taking a ‘Stake’ in property deals.

There were several articles about this in the press recently, mentioning banks taking an ‘interest’ or ‘equity stake’ in certain developments. Something that the articles failed to talk about was the underlying cause? When property was booming banks were not taking an equity stake, they would finance the deals but they didn’t tend to get in on the action, so why is it that during the downturn they would start to do this?

There are two ways of looking at this, one is the way that a lender would have you believe, the others is to aim for fair comment on what is an objective view.

First of all though, it is important to look at how debt affects liquidity, if a bank is seen to have any problems people start to withdraw money, that’s not speculation, that’s fact, it happened to Northern Rock, IndyMac and several other banks since. So there is no part of the market that is fully convinced when banks say that ‘we are …

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Interest Rates: The Fed, The Bank, and the ECB

Interest rates are again in the headlines as the Fed, the Bank of England and the ECB all had meetings. It may be a little known point but in the past there was some currency co-operation, namely the Plaza Accord and two years later the Louvre Accord and although there is no official ‘strategy’ we may start to notice that central banks act with at least some degree of collusion as they try to solve global economic issues. That last sentence might confuse, on one had interest rates are not connected to currency strengths but interest rates do have an effect on inflation and inflation can be brought about by currency manipulation (namely having too much in supply).

The Irish rate of inflation thus far in 2008 dropped from 5% in June to 4.4% according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO) the article in the Times didn’t mention if this was headline or core inflation. It has been our belief for some time that …

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What are the best mortgage rates? Mortgage Interest Rates explained.

What are the best Irish mortgage rates? What are interest rates and where do they come from? These are all good questions and in today’s post I hope to answer some of them.

Often I find that people call me and ask ‘what’s the best rate’ and then there is silence on the other end of the phone as they await an answer. The truth is that at any given time there is a ‘best mortgage rate’ out there, but normally there are restrictions surrounding it which inhibit the ability for most borrowers to avail of them.

We have come out of eight rate hikes which began at the end of 2005, and in an upward rate market people often feel that their old loan has become expensive, in fact it’s not necessarily the case that the ‘old loan’ is exceptionally dear, its that the rate market has gone up and therefore the cost of all loans has gone up, when we talk about the greater ‘debt burden’ that’s what we are referring to, because car loans, higher purchase, leases, …

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