Phil has over 25 years experience of investing. He started out as an investment analyst for asset managers and City stockbrokers before becoming a writer. He has worked for MoneyWeek and Investors’ Chronicle and was the CFA UK Financial Journalist of the year in 2020. He worked for ShareScope between 2014 and 2018 and helped to develop many of the investment tools in SharePad. He has written a number of educational investment articles for ShareScope and is also the author of the book How to Pick Quality Shares.
I am passionate about investor education and try and make what might seem complicated subjects easier to understand. Investing is not just about picking winners but also avoiding losers and learning from your mistakes. My aim is to make investing as simple as possible by focusing on what matters and avoiding what doesn’t.
In my previous article, I discussed the reasons for investing in good companies and how you can search for them in SharePad. We saw that investing in good companies can generate stellar returns for investors over time but being able to buy the shares of them at a reasonable price is often difficult. It is
Investing in good companies is one way to grow the value of your portfolio. In this article, Phil takes you through his method of searching for outstanding British companies using SharePad. When I first started out in the investing world more than a quarter of a century ago, value investing was still very much in
Buying a share in a company in the hope that it might get taken over is a risky thing to do. There’s no guarantee that a buyer will ever emerge and you could end up losing money waiting for one to turn up. Phil takes a look at some prominent takeovers of 2023 and asks
There’s no harm in using fund managers as a source for investment ideas but blindly copying them without doing your own research can be a costly mistake. Phil looks at the recent purchase of Rightmove shares by two well-known professional investors to see if private investors should consider buying in as well. Why copying others
Profit warnings are part and parcel of the experience of owning shares. They are not pleasant but they often contain valuable lessons which can benefit investors in the future. Sometimes they can just reflect a temporary blip. But they can also be a reason to question the sustainability of a company’s strategy and business model.
For some people, the thought of picking their own shares can be a little bit daunting. Rest assured, it doesn’t have to be. Whilst it is best to do at least a little bit of homework before you part with your hard-earned cash, successful investing does not require a high IQ or lots of specialist
In the second of his articles about stock-picking formulas, Phil takes a look at the Piotroski F-Score to see how useful it is at identifying winning shares. My previous article looked at the usefulness of The Magic Formula as an investing strategy in today’s stock markets. In this article, I am going to turn my
Joel Greenblatt’s simple stock-picking formula delivered great results in the past but may no longer be useful for today’s investing world. Phil takes a look at why this once popular stock screen now fails to consistently outperform the market. A brief overview of the magic formula The magic formula is the topic of Joel Greenblatt’s
Tax-efficient savings accounts such as individual savings accounts (Isas) and self-invested personal pensions (SIPPs) are the best option for most savers and investors. Here’s what you need to know. Isas Isas are tax-free savings accounts. This means that you are not liable for tax on any income you receive – such as interest or dividends
Investing has become more global. Gone are the days when UK private investors were restricted to putting their money solely in the UK stock market. Today, many online brokers make it just as easy for a person to trade an individual share on European, US and Asian markets as it is on UK markets. Of
Phil uses SharePad to examine the impact of share buybacks on shareholder returns. Do they make shareholders better off and should investors focus on growing companies instead? Do share buybacks really make shareholders better off? Should they prefer dividends instead? Opinion is divided on this subject. The great thing about a dividend from an investor’s
If you already have an Isa or Sipp account, you’ll have access to your broker’s free website. This probably provides you with investment data about funds and shares and will also let you see how your investments are doing. Why subscribe to SharePad when you can get all that for free? Well, it is debatable