Why you are the best person to manage your own money

The bear market rally seems to have fizzled – but not before sucking in many investors who should know better, including fund managers. John Stepek looks at why you should avoid falling victim to the City's short-term focus and manage your own money.

The big bear market rally hit a bit of a speed bump yesterday.

A recent spate of decent-looking results from the banking sector and some "less bad" economic data has helped fuel optimism over the past month or so. But Bank of America injected a big dose of reality as it warned that bad debts had tripled over the past year, as consumers continue to suffer.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.