Humans are terrible investors. Our brains are primarily driven by emotion and, in certain situations, it can make us act irrationally. This presents a problem for traditional economics, where there is a presumption that everyone acts rationally. To demonstrate this, imagine I offer you a game to play. A simple coin-toss: heads or tails. If you win, I will give you...
2016 has started in spectacularly poor fashion, eerily reminiscent of 2008 – a story that didn’t end well. In the furore of doom-and-gloom headlines, we prefer to ask a slightly more unorthodox question: How does it make you feel? If all this uncertainty* makes you feel anxious then you should try to go back to basics and follow these three rules: 1. Understand...
April heralds a number of major changes to tax and pension rules (as outlined in previous editions of this newsletter). One, that has so far avoided most of the headlines, is the change to the taxation of dividends and the introduction of a new dividend allowance. From April, everyone will be able to receive £5,000 of dividends without incurring any extra...