News from the Mews

Welcome to the Winter 2019 edition of News from the Mews. I have been helped in this edition by the Hamilton Financial Advisory Panel and by our new boy, Simon Milne. Here is a summary of the contents:
1) The HF Advisory Panel’s forecast of the General Election result on 12th December 2019.
2) Inheritance Tax (IHT) planning.
3) The Hamilton Financial Investment style.
4) Minutes of Meeting of the HF Advisory Panel on 29th November 2019.
5) An account of my first month with Hamilton Financial by Simon Milne.

Years ago, I remember my parents telling me to put a regular amount every month into a savings plan. (I wish I had listened more carefully!)

This was in the days before pension plans, with all their tax benefits. I also remember being told that if you invest in a regular savings plan, such as a unit trust plan, it doesn’t much matter whether stock markets go up or down – “you will benefit from pound cost averaging”.

So what is pound cost averaging? In simple terms, it means that if the market value of your unit trust savings plan falls, it doesn’t matter: the cost of the next unit (or units) you buy will be cheaper – so the average cost of all the units you hold will have reduced. (For those of us who don’t have lump sums
to invest, it is quite good to know that it’s not all doom and gloom if the markets fall!)

One or two friends have encouraged us to run our own pooled fund (a unit trust or investment trust).So why haven’t we taken their advice?

I will quote our own Peter Rintoul who has, in his previous life, run his own investment trust:-

“What we aim to do at Hamilton Financial is to run a fully diversified portfolio of funds managed by experts in their own particular field. So for example, for growth equity funds covering the globe, we use James Anderson and Tom Slater of Scottish Mortgage. For UK growth, we like the Independent Investment Trust run by Max Ward. And so on.

When I started Hamilton Financial, our friend Alex Hammond-Chambers suggested I would benefit from the help of a group of experienced advisers. This has evolved into our “Advisory Board” which Alex has kindly chaired since its inception. Over time we have invited other interested parties to widen our sources of information and broaden our views of the investment world.