Weekend Reading: Throwing another leg of lamb on the barbie

Good reads from around the Web.

Thanks for the amazing response to The Accumulator’s call on Tuesday for your thoughts on the future of pensions in light of the Government’s new consultation.

So far over 60 of you have written really constructive comments. I’d suggest the whole thread is worth a read if you’ve only read the article so far.

If you’re a glutton for pension punishment, a couple of other UK bloggers have also taken up the consultation theme, including DIY Investor (UK) and ermine at Simple Living in Suffolk.

As for me, I’m off to start cooking this afternoon’s barbeque.

Yes, before 10am!

I have a whole leg of lamb that I am going to try smoking and slow roasting for 3-4 hours.

The truth is I’m a bit daunted.

While I’m already far from a LIDL bargain burger BBQ-er, this is the first time I’ve ever attempted something so meaty – and in particular boney – on a barbeque.

I love my fancy Weber Kettle BBQ, which has cooked me out of some tough spots over the years – but this will be its toughest challenge yet.

So have a great weekend, and if you don’t hear from me next week I guess blame it on the E. coli!

From the blogs

Making good use of the things that we find…

Passive investing

• Should I really be buying stocks (or bonds) now? – Oblivious Investor
• Why buy and hold works – A Wealth of Common Sense
• What does it take to be a successful investor? – DIY Investor UK
• So few generals, so few top fund managers – Rick Ferri

Active investing

• Pictures of global risks – Musings on Markets
• Embracing uncertainty – iii blog
• Are Rolls-Royce shares worth buying? – UK Value Investor
• Neglected or distressed? – Oddball Stocks
• Big oil may be cheap for a reason – The Value Perspective

Other articles

• Calculating your portfolio’s rate of return – Canadian Couch Potato
• You can’t learn to be a great comedian or a great investor – AWOCS
• Can you forecast better than a dart throwing chimp? – The Psy-Fi blog
• Fear, paralysis, and getting started in investing – Abnormal Returns

Product of the week: Bank of England governor Mark Carney’s suggestion that rates might finally start to rise at the turn of the year knocked housebuilders’ share prices and sent some people rushing to fix their mortgages. Hopefully cash deposit rates might finally start edging up, too. Just this week Halifax and Virgin Money launched two-year ISAs paying 2%, which already make them table-toppers in that category.

Mainstream media money

Some links are Google search results – in PC/desktop view these enable you to click through to read the piece without being a paid subscriber of that site. ¹

Passive investing

• Faint praise indeed for active management – Morningstar
• Robert Shiller: The mirage of the financial singularity – Project Syndicate

Active investing

• Carl Icahn calls Blackrock and high yield ETFs “very dangerous” – N.Y. Times
• Income ain’t what it used to be [Search result] – FT
• Are the shares of gold mining companies a buy? – Bloomberg View
• Twitter spiked this week on a spoof takeover report – Bloomberg
• A visual history of failed stock market crash predictions – Fund Reference

Other stuff worth reading

• What rising interest rates mean for you – The Guardian
• How saving £86 a month extra could mean a good pension – The Guardian
• Apple Pay: What it is and how it works [Search result] – FT
• Cash is the only “entirely safe” investment – ThisIsMoney
• Inheritance tax: How does the UK compare? – Telegraph
• Investing philosophies in 10 words or less – Motley Fool US
• War against reason: The Genetically Modified Food (GMO) debate – Slate

Book of the week: The article on big oil by The Value Perspective in the links above suggested Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air for further reading into where humanity goes for its energy in the future. Written by David MacKay – the Regus Professor of Engineering at the University of Cambridge – it can apparently be downloaded for free as a PDF from a dedicated website but the link is not working for me this morning. In contrast, Amazon never sleeps!

Like these links? Subscribe to get them every week!

1. Note some FT articles can only be accessed through the search results if you’re using PC/desktop view (from mobile/tablet view they bring up the firewall/subscription page). To circumvent, switch your mobile browser to use the desktop view. On Chrome for Android: press the menu button followed by “Request Desktop Site”.[↩]