Every week I read a huge number of personal finance and investing articles. I thought you might enjoy a weekly shortcut to the best.
First, a quick thought on this week’s money news
UK banking bosses past and present were hauled over the coals by MPs this week. Nothing we didn’t know came to light, though some people got over-excited by bankers’ use of the word ‘sorry’.
Shame the bankers didn’t say sorry a couple of years ago, in a sentence like, “Sorry, you really can’t afford that over-priced home.”
Events on Friday hardly suggest banking bosses really are the financial masterminds they portrayed themselves as only a few years ago.
Shares in Lloyds, the centuries-old British bank, fell 33% in a couple of hours when it was revealed that losses from their recent shotgun-bride merger partner, HBOS, were in danger of fatally wounding the newly-created ‘super bank’.
Earlier this week CEO Eric Daniels had told those MPs that nothing unexpected had come up since Lloyds merged with HBOS.
Anyone still wondering why people are terrified of investing in banks?
The week’s best money posts
- S&P500 earnings cuts might be being over-egged by new CEOs ‘kitchen sinking’ company losses, says Political Calculations.
- The Behaviour Gap blog is no longer our little secret, after a post on outperforming by achieving an average result and side-stepping the ‘behaviour gap’ was picked up by the big boys.
- Mike at Oblivious Investor follows up by asking is the behaviour gap real?
- Pimp your Finances asks What Would Bilbo the Hobbit do? (Reminds me of a fun post I wrote about discovering your money muse in Star Wars).
- For many people, letting someone run their slide rule over your life is uncharted territory. If that’s you, The Smarter Wallet has a few tips on choosing a tax advisor.
- The UK-focussed Finance Blog considers the prospects and consequences of 0% interest rates.
- Further to my post yesterday on small passive income streams, here’s a nice graph on LiveLearnInvest that shows how a little niche income adds up.
- Trent at The Simple Dollar wrote a straightforward guide to creating your own monthly balance sheet.
A few non-blog articles
- The New York Times has a fascinating article on 135-year old municipal bonds that are finally set to be redeemed. That’s what I call long-term!
- The bad times for the UK housing market aren’t over, warns Mark Dampier in The Independent and Sharlene Goff in the FT.
- Standard Life investors in loss-making money market funds may be able to seek more compensation, says the FT.
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