Jonathan Davis

Most weeks I aim to provide some short extracts from my weekly diary, highlighting interesting research and other odds and ends that I have read, heard or noted. Some will relate to specific stocks, others to more general market phenomena. There will also be will be a summary of investment trust news and data every weekend, regular market and portfolio reviews and notes on Q and As with leading professional contacts of mine. 

New Year tips

I cannot resist kicking off the diary with this nice cartoon which I have stolen from a post by the always good value American fund manager and pundit Barry Ritholtz. Although its target is strategic planning, it neatly sums up my attitude to the plethora of forecasts and share tips that invariably dominate the New Year media. They are, in aggregate, I am afraid to say, worthless and I have always strenuously avoided making them, on the grounds (to paraphrase J.K.Galbraith on the subject of economists) that the reason the forecasts appear is not because anyone knows what is going to happen, but purely because they have been asked to make them.