Here is a tasty assortment from recent Web offerings: The Amateurs Lorillard Dividend Mantra kicks the habit. EasyJet Still cruising along quite nicely. Goldman Sachs The case for the vampire squid. The Professionals Smead Capital’s efficient market theory Don’t just do something, sit there. Woodford The man is back and worried about big oil’s dividends. Stress testing […]

Here is another selection of some of the Web’s finest offerings this week: The Amateurs Wells Fargo All About Interest explains his rationale behind purchasing Wells Fargo, Buffett’s favourite bank. Sainsbury DIY Investor checks out (sorry) the latest results from Sainsbury, my second favourite supermarket (after Waitrose). Family Dollar Stores A solid analysis of this American retailer, […]

I came across a fascinating section in Jeremy Siegel’s Stocks for the Long Run in which he showed the returns of the 20 best performing firms of the original S&P 500 that have survived intact. The make-up of the list was interesting–the 20 firms included 11 in the Consumer Staples sector, 4 in Healthcare, 2 Industrials, […]

To accompany a cup of coffee, here is a selection of articles gathered from around the Web this week: Berkshire Hathaway 2014 AGM … for those of you who couldn’t make it to Nebraska yesterday, for the annual Woodstock of capitalism. Berkeley Group DIY Investor goes for Berkeley. To sell in May or not I […]

Scotch whisky drinkers tend to be a difficult demographic: armchair-based, routine-driven, stuffy on a good day while downright grumpy on a bad, and very exacting when it comes to deciding what goes into their crystal tumblers. Trying to market a new brand to this lot is like trying to sell fillet steak to a penny-pinching vegetarian. Diageo have neatly sidestepped that problem by developing —Haig […]

A lot of light and noise has been generated by a new book–Flash Boys–that raises concerns about high-frequency trading (HFT) and enables journalists to use plenty of alarming phrases such as algorithmic terrorism, dark pools, and the little people getting fleeced. Michael Lewis, a man who, had he been born in a different era might well have been commissioned to […]

It seems that Mark Barnett is beginning to make his mark on the Edinburgh Investment Trust, a portfolio formerly managed by Neil Woodford. Woodford, a man about as inconspicuous and modish as Uluru when it comes to taking and holding positions, is a difficult act to follow, but Barnett seems to have set about the task by significantly diluting some […]

The organisers of the St. Patrick’s Day parade seem to be coming under increasing pressure over their continued exclusion of gay and lesbian groups. This year, both Guinness and Heineken pulled out of the parade in New York. At a time when mega corporations are often widely criticised for putting profit before principle, I think this is an […]

Photo by: Steven Depolo Is it really necessary to pay a fund manager 1.5% a year to buy you shares in GlaxoSmithKline? How hard can it be to recognise that GSK is a decent company with reasonable prospects over the long term and then to buy it at a time that it is not grossly over priced? […]