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.
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
In the last of his Investors Chronicle articles, Phil looks at companies reinstating dividends or starting to pay them for the 1st time. Read pdf article
First published in Investors Chronicle, Phil explains how to avoid the shares that might let you down. Read pdf article
First published in Investors Chronicle, Phil explains how to identify which high-yielding shares are most likely to maintain or grow their dividends. Read pdf article
Lots of people will tell you that the price you pay for a share really matters. This is because it has a big say on the kind of long-term returns you will make from it. What this means in practice is that paying too much for a share – too high a valuation – is likely to
Elegant Hotels is the owner and operator of a number of upmarket hotels on the Caribbean island of Barbados. The company has been in business for a while and was previously listed on the stock exchange under the name of St James’ Beach Hotels until it was bought by a private equity firm in the
Two weeks ago I wrote about how to try and value companies that aren’t making a profit. This week I’m going back to basics for more inexperienced investors. Although I’m sure there will be some reminders here for regular readers. For many successful investors, the price they pay for a share of a company is
One of the questions I am frequently asked is: “How do I value loss-making companies?”. The short answer is that it can be really quite difficult. It is so much easier to try and value profitable businesses with an established financial history. However, the value of any business is based on how much money it