28 Jan The best of what we read, watched and listened to this week
Image by Ken Boyd from Pixabay
Having ourselves returned to working in the office this week, it seems that the train companies are keen to encourage us to resume travelling with offers of the chance to win free food. Of course it’s not as simple as providing it on the train and only 1,000 are available, so all in all we’d settle for the trains actually showing up rather than being cancelled in the time it takes me to drive to the station. [1 min read]
While Mr Putin rattles his divisions on the border with Ukraine and concerns continue over Omicron and inflation, it’s been hard to miss markets reflecting investors’ nervousness in several weeks of price falls. It is therefore timely to reiterate that such volatility is the price for achieving long term returns and as long as you are investing in line with the risk you are willing to take, there is no need to worry about the things you can’t control. [3 min read]
Cryptocurrency and investing according to ESG (environmental, social and governance) principles are two of the recurring themes of newsflow about investing in recent years. Despite this, they are hardly compatible, given the reportedly huge carbon footprint of mining bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency. The distributed ledger technology which allows cryptocurrency to function however, is a different story. [5 min read]
One trend which we’re observing to be on the increase is clients asking us to provide some kind of guidance on financial planning matters to their children. One of the challenges that all parents face is when to raise the subject but given how important the subject is, it’s a good idea to do so sooner rather than later. [3 min read]
Once in a while a story appears that seems too bizarre to be true but this report from Co. Carlow in the Republic of Ireland reminds us that some people will go to extraordinary lengths to obtain relatively small sums of money. In this case, it was a relative’s weekly pension of less than €250. [2 min read]
We hope you have a good weekend.
Charles and Rob