| |
| INVESTING
FOR CAPITAL GROWTH |
 Any
investor looking for real capital appreciation should,
wherever possible, have a balanced portfolio. A
part of the capital should be earmarked for security
and invested in areas such as gilts and or property.
Part should be invested more adventurously in, say
equities. The precise balance will always be dependent
on the investor's attitude to risk. |
| INVESTING
FOR INCOME |
| There
are two main questions to consider for someone expecting
to derive an income over several decades from a
lump sum. First in order of importance is security.
It is vital that no excessive risks are taken, whatever
is chosen as the vehicle. Second comes inflation.
For those looking at drawing an income for many
years, steps need to be taken to allow for the reduction
in buying power of that income, by careful planning. |
|
I
live in/am moving to Portugal and would like an
independent guide through the investment maze.
|
|
I
live in/am moving to Portugal and would
like to review my existing investments.
|
| Offshore
investments |
Income
Bonds |
Building
Society
Accounts |
Bank
Accounts |
Unit
Trusts |
Traded
Endowment
Policies |
Switch
Invest |
Ucits |
Securities |
With
Profit
Bonds |
Guarenteed
Bonds |
| SICAVs |
Annuities |
Income
Drawdown |
Government
Stocks |
Hedge
Funds |
| SWITCH
INVEST |
| The
Problem: |
| With
interest rates on deposits in general only keeping
pace with inflation it is difficult to know where
to invest to obtain real capital growth without
subjecting your investment to high risk. |
| Many
people are quite correctly advised to invest some
of their savings in funds managed by Unit Trust
firms or in Life Assurance Companies Single Premium
Investment Bonds. Because the funds are linked to
the stock markets and produce varying results from
time to time although in the medium to long term
have always out performed the deposit-based investments
such s bank and building society accounts. It is
common practise to use a spread of investment institutions/funds
with the bulk of the funds in the Managed, Balanced
or Mixed fund of that particular organisation. Each
investment institution has a range of funds to choose
from with different levels of risk and degrees of
growth. They offer the facility to switch from one
fund to another depending on market trends. |
| An
individual can monitor the progress of the above
investments, from information gleaned from the financial
press but it can be a problem to positively identify
the fund and the date it is valued. |
| The
Solution: |
| GBC
have installed a very comprehensive investment analysis
program on their state of the art computer system
which enables each investment institutions funds
to be monitored on a daily basis and a daily decision
to be made as to which fund the clients investment
should be in at any one time. This enables us to
capitalise on stock markets growth and minimise
losses when the markets are on a down tern. This
is achieved by ensuring the clients capital, at
any one time is in the right type of fund to either
achieve growth or to protect against falls. E.g.
Investing in equity fund in rising markets and switched
to a protected cash fund in times of falling markets. |
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|
Whereas this
is not an exact science and our aim is to outperform
a typical managed fund while endeavouring to minimise
any losses. As you can see from the chart below
the Switch Invest System over the last two years,
achieved its aim despite the uncertainty in the
market and the events of September 11th. The cost
of this facility is only 1%p.a. of the investment
fund value and clients believe it is "value
for money", as an extra 3% to 5%p.a growth
above the norm can be expected thus showing a
net increased return after the switch invest charges
of between 2% and 4%p.a.
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