Robert Harris has over 25 years experience working for some of the major financial institutions in the City of London, including 12 years at Citibank where he was a Senior Banker. During his time at Citibank, Robert was responsible for global relationships with important financial institutions and instigated a number of landmark deals.
Robert is a founding partner of Forth Capital and has helped the company become the leading expat financial advisory company in Switzerland. He has been quoted in the Financial Times and numerous magazine articles.
For the www.knowitall.ch website, Robert invites various members of his team at Forth Capital to contribute blog articles on different financial topics that he thinks will be of interest to our readers.
By Robert Harris, Forth Capital
Nobody can time the markets consistently. It is time spent IN the market, rather than trying to time the market, that is the key to medium to long-term investment growth. If you want to be invested in equities you must be prepared to understand that a market cycle is usually five to seven years, and if you can’t be invested for that length of time, you should not be invested in equities.
For example, if you had been invested in a UK index fund from 1980-2009, you should have achieved a return of 700% on your investment. However, if you missed the best 20 days of stock market performance during that period, that return would have been reduced to just 240%.
The lesson for all investors here is that as long as you are invested in your correct risk strategy, and for the medium to long term, you should stay invested and “ride the wave”.
If we look at the events of the last 3 months, most stock market performance has been driven by statements from the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Powell, whose statements have signalled changes in US interest rates from increases of 0.5% to reductions of 0.25%, causing markets to fall and rise depending on the statement.
Another example of when staying invested has proven to be the best route, is the performance of Forth Capital’s Next Generation funds which continue to rebound after the general market shock in the 4th quarter of 2018.
By Robert Harris, Forth Capital
Passive investing is an investment strategy that tracks an index and focuses on increasing portfolio values with limited day-to-day management of the portfolio itself. Management costs are therefore significantly reduced. Research shows that passive investment consistently beats the returns of actively managed funds.
In this short video, Emma Morgan, Portfolio Manager at Morningstar Investment Management Europe, tells us about Forth Capital’s Next Generation Passive Investment Strategies, and the associated benefits.
Here are some quotes from Emma Morgan:
“Clear advantages of this approach are its low cost nature and the transparency that comes with passive investing. While returns are uncertain, costs are not, so minimizing charges helps to build investors’ wealth in the long term”
“These portfolios cater for investors from cautious to more adventurous and they’re investing globally in money markets, bonds and equities”
Watch the video now to find out more.
For further information on Forth Capital’s Next Generation Investment Strategies contact us on +41 22 311 1441 or click here and we can call you: https://www.forthcapital.com/about-us/contact-us/
Author's bio
Robert Harris has over 25 years experience working for some of the major financial institutions in the City of London, including 12 years at Citibank where he was a Senior Banker. During his time at Citibank, Robert was responsible for global relationships with important financial institutions and instigated a number of landmark deals.
Robert is a founding partner of Forth Capital and has helped the company become the leading expat financial advisory company in Switzerland. He has been quoted in the Financial Times and numerous magazine articles.
For the www.knowitall.ch website, Robert invites various members of his team at Forth Capital to contribute blog articles on different financial topics that he thinks will be of interest to our readers.
By Robert Harris, Forth Capital
As Partner and Chairman of the Investment Committee at Forth Capital, I have been asked to give my thoughts on the recent market volatility:
It won’t have gone unnoticed that stock markets fell by over 4% at the end of January. So, what happened and what lessons should be learned? Should you be concerned about your investments and pensions?
In the short term, markets never move in a straight line and they often make big moves both up and down. The large fall in the market on Friday 2nd Feb in the US was caused ironically by better than expected performance in the US economy. The effect of President Trump’s massive fiscal stimulus (tax cuts allied to government spending) has boosted the US economy and caused wages to rise faster than expected, which in turn will fuel inflation.
The fall in the stock market is a result of expectation of rising interest rates (not actual rises!). On the 6th Feb markets rebounded as investors bought cheaper assets.
By Audrey Flynn, Forth Capital
Judith
Judith has been married to Steven for almost 15 years. She stopped working several years ago, to look after their two children, returning to work part-time at a lower level when the children started school. Five years ago, Steven had the opportunity to work in Asia for several years and Judith happily gave up her job to move there with him and the children. Then, without warning, Steven announced that he wanted a divorce which forced Judith to reassess her life and her financial situation for the future.
Like many women Judith hadn’t contributed to a pension scheme on a full-time basis for most of her adult life, as she had taken career breaks to look after her children and to support her husband in his career. She had always relied on Steven to manage the family finances with minimum discussion, and without contemplating her own pension.
The sudden break down of her marriage forced Judy to look more closely at her financial situation and realise that she had never sensibly planned for her own retirement, relying entirely on her husband for their retirement plans. She had no idea how much money she had, nor how much she would need to save to enjoy the lifestyle she hoped for when she retired - and she had no idea where to start…
By Audrey Flynn, Forth Capital
Planning for your retirement can often be a very complex process and for many it is very important to seek expert advice. Retirement Planning is crucial, with life expectancy increasing and the birth rate in the west falling, and now is the time to plan for your future. Most governments can no longer guarantee funding of their citizens’ retirement and, as a consequence, they are regularly increasing retirement age and finding ways to heavily tax pension withdrawals. As healthcare and lifestyles improve, people are living longer meaning that lucrative final salary pension schemes have become too expensive for most companies to fund.
The process of retirement planning is relatively straightforward in principal. Ideally, you want to make sure that you have enough income and assets to live the lifestyle that you want. What makes retirement planning more difficult is determining how that lifestyle should be and what it will cost you. Then there is the challenge of dealing with the many variables that go into the process and the pace at which they change, specifically knowing if and when you can retire.
On 9 May Forth Capital are hosting a seminar in Geneva on Low-Cost Investment Strategies for International Investors.
Actively managed UK equity funds on average delivered a return of 11.2 per cent last year, just under 6 percentage points lower than the 17.1 per cent return enjoyed by the UK equity index calculated by S&P. In the same period our Forth Capital Next Generation Morningstar Growth Fund delivered 28.5 return.
If you haven’t made the move to passive strategies – do it now. Forth Capital have created five strategies exclusively for our clients that are highly suited for Retirement Savers, and we have already created nearly 10 million GBP in profit for our clients in the last 12 months. This seminar is an ideal opportunity for English speakers in Geneva and frontaliers to learn more about this opportunity.
