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.
Should investors pay much attention to analysts’ profit forecasts? There is a school of thought that suggests that they should not. Detractors say that forecasts are nothing more than educated guesswork and that analysts are very bad at predicting changes such as profit warnings or recessions. In many cases, forecasts are merely the extrapolation of
(LSE:CPC 196p, Mkt Cap £96.3m, EMS 1500, Analysts 2) City Pub Group listed on AIM back in November. The company currently owns 38 managed pubs situated in London and the south of England. Twenty three of these pubs are freeholds (owned outright by the company) with 15 leased or rented. Thirty three pubs are currently
There are many full time private investors out there but for others investing is a hobby or something that they fit around their day to day activities. If you don’t have a lot of time on your hands one of the toughest tasks you will have is narrowing down the list of potential investments on
Avon Rubber is a good example of a company that fits into the category of a profitable niche business. It started off as a cloth mill in 1885 but most people will know its name from Avon Tyres which was sold off in 1994. Today it makes its money from selling protective breathing products and
It doesn’t take too much time to get a feel for how well a company is doing. Most people do this by looking at percentage changes in key numbers – such as turnover and profit – from one period to the next. They may also look at key ratios such as profit margins or return
Soft drinks company Nichols (AIM:NICL) has been a good share to own over the last few years. It has many of the hallmarks of a high quality business but its shares have been drifting downwards in recent weeks. This seems like a good time to take a closer look at what has been going on
For those of you who like the idea of a buy and forget investing strategy then Joel Greenblatt’s Magic Formula of buying good companies at fair prices takes a lot of beating in my view. It is a simple and powerful way to put together a portfolio and one that has a pretty good long-term
If you were to ask me to recommend just one book on investing then I would struggle to think of anything better than Joel Greenblatt’s book ‘The Little Book that beats the Market’. It is very easy to read and is not very long. The book does a great job in convincing the reader that
Henry Boot is a Sheffield-based company which makes money from property and construction activities. It has four main sources of income: Buying land, getting planning permission for it and then selling it to house builders for a profit. Developing commercial property such as warehouses, offices and industrial units. It also has a small house building
One of the main considerations for people investing in shares these days is the dividend income they will get from owning them. With a world of low interest rates on savings accounts and bonds and a change in the rules for taking pension income the choice of dividend-paying shares has arguably never been more important.
Over a decade ago when I was a smaller companies analyst in the City, UK engineering company Fenner was part of the portfolio of stocks that I researched. I also got to know the company and its management team reasonably well when I gave up being a stockbroker and went to work for a fund
One of the most commonly cited measures of a company’s financial strength is something known as the current ratio. It is a measure of liquidity and compares a company’s current assets – defined as assets that can be turned into cash within one year – with its current liabilities (those which have to be paid