FinanceBAM News

On 06 June Jeremy Gates wrote an article for MSN Money under the topic “Are Premium Bonds worth it?” Some financial advisors struggle to say a good word about them, Premium Bonds mark their historic half century this month at the height of their popularity. On June 1 1957, ERNIE – the Premium Bonds prize draw machine - picked his first winner, with the jackpot a princely £1,000. That would have been enough to buy a new Morris Minor, a caravan to tow, return flights to New York or a top of the range black and white TV. £1,000 in 1956 is worth about £16,729 today.Fifty years on, an estimated 23 million British adults, 40% of the population, hold more than £32 billion in bonds. (more…)

On 13^th June Alpesh Patel wrote an article for Msn Money about how to handle the FTSE when it is on a rollercoaster ride. According o Patel the only way is PPP: Plan, Prepare and protect. He says that if you risk too little on each trade the returns will be too low to overcome transaction costs, small losses and over­heads (quote feeds, electricity, rent, costs of books and so on). While studying finance it is often taught “High Risks High Returns” but one bad trade can put you in dangerous waters. Traders use different formulae to work out how much money they should put on any trade. Gibbons Burke provides one such useful formula. (more…)

According to an article written by Nick Louth on 23^rd May for the Msn Money the “Sharia investment growing in appeal”, he says that the British Muslims face problem in dealing with most of the banks. This is for the reason that most bank accounts, mortgages and investments offers are against Islamic teaching as the offer interest, or riba, which it categorises as usury. Muslims have certain prohibitions when considering investment. (more…)

Recently the government Bonds have found there way to the main headlines John Stepek says in his 25^th June’s article “Why a recession is on the cards” for MSN Money.  Although things have stabilised somewhat now, the yield on a 10-year gilt (UK government bond) last week hit a seven-year high of nearly 5.5%, while in the US, the yield on a 10-year Treasury (US government bond) also shot up. (more…)

According an article written by to John Stepek on 28^th June for the MSN Money “The US housing market should be the world’s biggest worry”.  The stock markets throughout the world have been experiencing a seemingly inexorable rise. One of the key worries is the condition of two hedge funds run by investment bank Bear Stearns. The two hedge funds included - the High-Grade Structured Credit Fund and the High-Grade Structured Credit Enhanced Leverage Fund. These have invested heavily in securities related to the US sub-prime mortgage market which every one else is trying to ignore. (more…)

The June 29, 2007 edition of Telegraph explains how Sports Direct, the retailer that own Sports World chain and the Lillywhites store in the UK has purchased Everlast, the well-known American boxing glove manufacturer, for 84 million pounds. (more…)

Mark Atherton wrote an interesting article in the June 27, 2007 edition of Times Online. In it he explained that the Financial Services Authority (FSA) announced plans for a massive shake-up of the financial industry. Critics say that it still has not gone far enough. (more…)

An article in the June 28, 2007 edition of Daily Mail, showed how property prices have increased 1% in the month of June.

Nationwide stated that property values were raised by 1.1% during that same time. This was more than double the rate of increase seen the month before. (more…)

On 19^th June Chris Gilchrist wrote an article for Everyinvestor.co.uk. According to the article more banks are pushing up savings rates to well above the Bank of England’s 5.5% base rate. It’s now easy to collect a no-string 6% on your money. Although the Bank of England have not raised interest rates in June its boss has given speeches in which he’s made it clear there are further interest rate rises in the pipeline. Many of the banks have taken the hint are now offering 6% on instant-access accounts. At the moment the best genuine no-strings accounts are from Sainsbury’s Bank (6% from £1), Icesave (5.95% from £250), ICICI Bank (6.05% from £1), and Northern Rock Online Silver Savings (6% from £1, 50+ only). (more…)

In an article written for MSN Money, Naomi Caine on June 20^th stated that HM Revenue & Customs wants to claw back hundreds of millions of pounds from people with offshore accounts. The department have long suspected that people are hiding money offshore for this reason they set up the Offshore Fraud Project Group (OFPG) to try to nail the tax cheats. in 2002. However they faced a lot of difficulty in extracting information from the banks due to their confidentiality agreement. (more…)