Few things whet the appetite for investors quite as much as yield. Hefty dividends and or chunky interest payments can go a long way to compensating for the volatility and risk of capital markets. Nowhere is this more pertinent than in equity income funds. The attractions of this category mean that they merit not one but two sectors in the UK; Equity Income and UK Equity & Bond Income where the labels are fairly self-explanatory. To put them into context the average yield for

In March 2009 the UK government embarked on a journey into the unknown when it started a process called Quantitative Easing in which it helped monetary conditions by buying gilts with money it had created. It wasn’t the first central bank to do this. The Federal Reserve of the USA had already started and later on both the ECB and the Bank of Japan undertook similar programmes. China also helped by liberally financing all-sorts of infrastructure and building projects. These a

This is the time of year when many companies have reported results for the previous year and have sent out their reports and accounts to be approved by shareholders at forthcoming AGMs. The Remuneration report usually get most attention and are always going to be a sensitive topic, but it sometimes seems as if directors are deliberately trying to provoke shareholders to react by the scale of their rewards which, increasingly, are dominated by bonuses and usually paid in share

Slowly, very slowly the concept of smart-beta is beginning to creep into the consciousness of the investment community, though it is probably still a long way from penetrating the retail investment world. Like many new ideas it suffers from, or perhaps enjoys, a multitude of definitions and descriptions. So, at the risk of muddying the waters even more, here is another. It was probably around early 2009 that the phrase Smart-Beta began to be used. Before that the approach had