In a new column for Irish Medical Times, financial guru Eddie Hobbs says that many pension funds — including the GMS pension fund — haven’t allowed for double-digit inflation, which is likely in the coming years. What can you do to protect yourself from asset destruction? It’s hard to get your head around what’s happening [...]

Conor White writes that investing in corporate bonds should be safer than investing in equity and that bonds outperform stocks at certain times in the economic cycle — like now, for instance. Have you ever heard co-workers talking around the water cooler about a ‘hot tip’ on a bond? Probably not. Bonds do not have [...]

Last year was a ‘once in a lifetime’ year. The developed world economy fell into recession in the second half of 2008 for the first time since the Second World War. As a result, all risk assets had one of their worst years on record. There has also been a dramatic change to inflation expectations. [...]

Berna Cox writes that children who, until now, have been reaping the benefits of their parents’ Celtic Tiger lifestyles will have to learn how to squirrel away some savings for a rainy day. Sometimes, when I indulge in a bit of navel-gazing and take to pondering life’s great questions, I think I’d like to be [...]

Conor White gives us an overview of the telecoms sector, which is better insulated than most against a worsening economy, and reports on some of the major players in the sector such as KPN. The European telecom sector is down 36% so far this year despite robust earnings resilience (only -5% downgrade to FY08 consensus [...]

Conor White writes that now might be the time to buy equities, as equity markets normally bottom as economies enter recession. The worst that could happen is that you just get your dividend yield. It has been a ‘white-knuckle ride’ in financial markets over the last couple of months and we have seen a reset [...]

Conor White outlines the benefits of establishing self directed retirement portfolios, which allow professionals to have an effective tax management plan in place for minimising tax on earned income. A self-directed retirement portfolio allows medical and other professionals to accumulate an investment portfolio for retirement in a very tax-effective way, and with wide investment flexibility. [...]

Asset allocation looks at the question of how much of one’s savings one should invest in different asset classes. There are four main asset classes (cash; bonds; equities; property) and a growing band coming under the name of ‘other’ (includes metals, oil, agricultural products and hedge funds). At times, the decision about which asset you [...]

Conor White examines the stock prices of Bayer and Colgate and finds them both to be in good shape, despite the challenges of the current economic climate BAYER E52.79 Bayer is a diversified group consisting of three primary businesses: Healthcare, Crop Science and Material Science. Healthcare accounts for 46 per cent of group sales and [...]