Sunday, December 16, 2007

What is long-term investment?

Jeff Prestridge, in today's UK "Mail on Sunday" finance section, reports that the Personal Assets trust, controlling £188 million, has changed its weighting from 60% cash earlier this year to 100% cash now. He's sniffy about their performance over the last 5 years, contrasting them with the likes of Baillie Gifford.

Well, I'm not a respected Fleet Street money journalist, merely a no-account bearish personal financial adviser, but I'd suggest that in the exciting investment world of today, maybe a five-year period is not a good basis for comparing long-term results, or conditioning expectations for the future.

I had a client ask my opinion about investments a couple of years ago, because his bank had been showing him their fund's marvellous growth over a three-year period. I took time to explain to my client that over the five years to date (then), the graph (as for the FTSE 100) described a kind of bowl shape, and the period chosen by his bank just happened to draw a line from the bottom of the bowl to the lip.

I then showed him the five-year line in all its loveliness:

I think it's fair to say that these are not ordinary times. There has been a steady build-up of electrical charge, so to speak, over something like a decade (some would say, much longer), and there may well be some powerful bolts unleashed as a result. Where will the lightning will strike next: a steeple, an oak tree, a cap badge - who can tell?

Massive debt; changes in the balance of international trade; demographic weakening of future public finances; sneaky currency devaluation; wild financial speculation; wars and the rumours of wars; imprecisely known ecological limits to growth; declining energy resources; the desperation of the world's poor to join our fantastic lifestyle; our fear that we may lose the comfortable living we used to imagine was our birthright; the corruption, abuse and neglect of the young; the selfishness of their parents and the middle-aged; the increasing burden and growing neglect and abuse of the old.

In all this turmoil, making five-year investment performance comparisons has an air of unreality, like planning tomorrow's menu on a mortally-wounded ocean liner.

2 comments:

GP said...

It's stunning to see that funds still use this type of editing of graph data to fool their customers. I remember first finding out about it by reading a Mad magazine satire on dodgy advertising techniques when I was about eight. Who knew comedy could be so educational?

Sackerson said...

Welcome, Unpremeditated. Nice to meet a fellow MAD admirer. Actually, I think comedy is often education condensed - think of Hitchhiker's Guide, or print cartoons.

In this case, it wasn't the fund at fault, but the bank adviser. Gives you an idea of the quality of advice you get. When did you last hear an adviser say, stay out of the market? Now look at Karl Denninger's latest post (Friday).