Why do so many people prefer property to pensions as an investment? One reason is the feeling of control. Property feels safer because you can do something about it. You can find a tenant. You can fix the roof. If prices fall, you can sit tight. But as I explain in my latest article for The Times, some of the biggest risks are completely out of your hands. Property prices can fall and stay down for years. Your mortgage rate can jump when a fixed deal ends. The government can change the tax rules. A tenant can stop paying rent, and it may take months to evict them. Investing in shares through a pension can feel much riskier. You're exposed to the ups and downs of the stock market, and you can't normally access the money until later in life. But here's the difference. A low-cost global index fund spreads your money across thousands of companies around the world. A buy-to-let flat is one property, in one street, with one tenant. So which is really safer.. the investment that makes you feel in control, or the one that spreads your risk? #Property #Pensions #BuyToLet

One of the reasons why investing in property seems safer than investing in shares is that we can see share prices fluctuate, minute by minute, every day. But a house is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it, and we never know the value of the house we're living in until we come to sell it. Yes, share prices sometimes fall very fast, but house prices do as well. The latest figures from the ONS, released today, show that average property prices in Kensington and Chelsea fell 13.8 per cent in the year to August 2026. Meanwhile, Bloomberg is reporting that Sir John Griffin, the founder of the London taxi company Addison Lee, has sold his home overlooking Regent’s Park for £11.5 million. It's been on the market since November 2022, when he was asking £29 million. Scary place, the housing market. #HousePrices #Property #Shares #Investing

Be honest. Have you ever chosen a fund because of its track record? Almost everyone has. It feels like due diligence. But the people paid to do this properly, the consultants and fund selectors with teams, data and access, don’t pick winners in advance either. The academic research is consistent on that. Craig Lazzara, who ran the SPIVA scorecards at S&P Dow Jones Indices, says the main problem is that long-term outperformers are extremely rare. Even Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has underperformed the S&P 500 by about two per cent a year since 2009. 👉 If even the smartest, best-resourced professionals find it very hard, why do we trust ourselves to do it? 🤔 #ActiveVsPassive #EvidenceBasedInvesting #IndexFunds

We keep hearing about how the US stock market is "dangerously concentrated".. and how that's a reason to avoid index funds. But markets all over the world are concentrated. In the UK, France, Germany and Italy, the ten biggest companies make up somewhere between half and two-thirds of the main stock market index. In Australia it’s around 60 per cent. Nor is it new. Across the whole US market, the ten biggest companies made up 38 per cent in 1900. Today it’s under 30 per cent. And at the end of 1899, railways alone were around half the value of the UK market. @benjaminfelix tested whether a market’s starting level of concentration predicts its returns over the next ten years. In US data back to 1926, and in a range of other markets, he found no meaningful relationship. 👉 If concentration doesn’t predict what happens next, what are the warnings we're hearing actually based on? 🤔

If you’re choosing a hospital for an operation, or a school for your child, the obvious thing to do is look at the league table. Many of us pick funds the same way. Five years at the top of the table looks like evidence. It doesn’t feel like chasing performance. It feels like doing your homework. In my latest piece in @thetimes, I look at how useful that evidence really is. S&P Dow Jones Indices took 69 UK equity funds in the top quarter for the five years to 2020. Over the next five years, only two stayed there. Some 32 dropped to the bottom quarter. Another 16 merged or closed. If the 53 survivors had landed at random, you’d expect about 13 in the top quarter. Only two made it. The reason is that a track record bundles together skill, investment style, market conditions and luck. The record alone can’t tell you which produced the returns, or which will still be working after you buy. Whatever a fund earned before you bought it went to someone else. YOUR returns start on the day you invest.

In the late 1980s, a judge in Basingstoke gave @AlanDonegan’s family a month to leave their home. His dad’s business had failed. The bankruptcy was secured against the house they lived in. They sold things at car boot sales to buy food. Alan shouted at the judge. Security threatened to drag him out. He calls it one of the worst days of his life. It’s also why he spent the next 20 years learning everything he could about money. What he and Katie eventually did was unglamorous. They opened up a gap between what they earned and what they spent, and put the difference into a global equity index fund, month after month. Katie stopped needing to work at 35. Alan at 40. They now teach it, free, to tens of thousands of people a year.. And, two years ago, they were awarded the British Empire Medal for services to financial education. Money is rarely just about money.

Investors in Nick Train's flagship investment trust are rushing for the exits, reports @tomjs in @MoneyTelegraph. It's no surprise when you look at how much they've lost relative to a low-cost index fund. It's hard to know what to say to investors in funds with "star' managers like Neil Woodford or Terry Smith after they've flopped spectacularly. At least they've learnt that It's far, far better not to invest in one in the first place. 👇

There's been much discussion lately about one-fund portfolios. @Ben_Wilkinson_, Head of Money at @TheTimes and Sunday Times, wrote about how he uses just one fund.. the Vanguard FTSE Global All-Cap UCITS ETF (VALL). It gives him exposure to more than 6,400 large, medium and small stocks all over the world, including emerging markets.. and all for just 0.07%. There are similar offerings, but VALL is a very sensible option.. Many investors may never need anything else. Personally, though, I prefer a two-fund portfolio.. pairing a fund like VALL with a low-cost, systematic fund that tilts towards value and profitability. There's absolutely no guarantee, but, as long as you're prepared to stick with it, the academic evidence suggests that value and profitability tilts may well outperform over time. This isn't a recommendation, and it's certainly not financial advice, but one provider you should look at is Dimensional. Its Global Core Equity UCITS ETF (DPCG) currently holds more than 7,000 stocks — large, medium and small — in developed markets worldwide. It has systematic tilts towards smaller companies, lower valuations and higher profitability and costs 0.20%. So yes, it costs almost three times more than VALL.. and only time will tell if the premium you pay is worth it. But this two-fund approach I've described is broadly what I do with my own money. My latest video on the TEBI YouTube channel explains more.. There's a link in the first comment. Again, I'm only a journalist. If you're unsure about what to do, speak to an evidence-based financial adviser. And please let me know your thoughts. #Funds #ETFs #EvidenceBasedInvesting