Pound-cost averaging

A time-tested method for controlling risk over time

It’s natural to be looking for ways to smooth out your portfolio’s returns. Investing regularly can smooth out market highs and lows over time. In a fluctuating market, a strategy known as ‘pound-cost averaging’ can help smooth out the effect of market changes on the value of your investment and is one way to achieve some peace of mind through this simple, time-tested method for controlling risk over time.

Taking a long-term view

Remember your reasons for investing in the first place

Stock markets can be unpredictable. They move frequently – and sometimes sharply – in both directions. It is important to take a long-term view (typically ten years or more) and remember your reasons for investing in the first place.

Allocating wealth

One of the most important investment decisions you ever make

How you choose to allocate your wealth between different asset classes will be one of the most important investment decisions you ever make. Asset allocation can account for the majority of your portfolio returns over the long term, so it’s essential that you achieve the right balance of cash, fixed income, equities and property in your portfolio.

Investment diversification

Protecting your money from adverse market conditions

Today’s markets are as uncertain as ever. But there is one certainty – the future is coming. It may no longer be enough to simply preserve what you have today; you also have to build what you will need for tomorrow. When deciding whether to invest, it is important that any investment vehicle matches your feelings and preferences in relation to investment risk and return.

Investing in a highly complex world

Generalisation groupings should be viewed with caution

Investors like to sort things into neat categories; it helps make sense of a highly complex world. Categories like ‘Emerging Markets’, ‘BRICs’ – Brazil, Russia, India, China – and the ‘Fragile Five’ have all been invented as easy-to-understand groupings of supposedly similar countries. Yet we have to be careful of such generalisations, because the more research you do, the more you realise that there are often more differences than similarities between these groupings.

Main types of investment

Understanding asset classes

Cash
This involves putting your money into a savings account, with a bank, building society or credit union. Your money may not hold its spending power if inflation is higher than the interest rate. Cash is the most basic of all investment forms. Saving money into a deposit account with a bank, building society or credit union is considered cash saving. Cash can be used to save for immediate needs or as a parking place in-between investing in other assets.

Developing an investment strategy

Allow your lifestyle to dictate your investment approach

To make the most of your investment opportunities, allow your lifestyle and not stock market fluctuations to dictate your investment approach. Your goals are what count, so keep them firmly in mind when you make financial decisions. 

It’s easy to lose track of pensions

Helping you take full control of your retirement savings

People change jobs, employers change their names but, more importantly, we all forget things from time to time. With that in mind, it is easy to lose track of pensions that you have paid into over the years.

‘Silver-splitters’

More couples are deciding to part later in life

Divorce is not purely exclusive to the young or middle-aged, and we’re seeing a steady increase in what have been dubbed the ‘silver-splitters’ – couples who are deciding to part in later life.

Boosting retirement savings

Are investors failing to think long-term about their futures?

Boosting retirement saving is the key goal for investors in 2014, yet despite this long-term objective, almost three fifths (61%) of those surveyed say they are looking for satisfactory investment returns within just five years, with just 5% taking a longer-term view of ten years or more.