Two ways to make investing easy

Investing is supposed to be simple. But it doesn't feel like it at the moment, says Phil Oakley. Here, he outlines two common sense strategies that will help you keep your head - and your money - while others lose theirs.

Investing should be simple: you try to put your money into cheap assets that will grow in value over time, and after a number of years, you hope to have enough money to live on, or to buy something that you want.

But something's gone wrong. We are constantly bombarded with information about economies and companies. So the stock market behaves like a manic-depressive up one day, down the next. As a result, as countless studies show, we trade too often and lose huge amounts of money in fees and other charges.

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Phil spent 13 years as an investment analyst for both stockbroking and fund management companies.

 

After graduating with a MSc in International Banking, Economics & Finance from Liverpool Business School in 1996, Phil went to work for BWD Rensburg, a Liverpool based investment manager. In 2001, he joined ABN AMRO as a transport analyst. After a brief spell as a food retail analyst, he spent five years with ABN's very successful UK Smaller Companies team where he covered engineering, transport and support services stocks.

 

In 2007, Phil joined Halbis Capital Management as a European equities analyst. He began writing for MoneyWeek in 2010.