The beginnings of a bubble in simplicity

The fashion with investors now is for simplicity: buy good quality dividend-paying stocks and stick with them. And at the moment, there is only one market in the world that can deliver, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

I interviewed Hugh Young, managing director of Aberdeen Asia a few weeks ago. We spoke about a variety of interesting things just how "venal" the financial industry is and how the saddest thing about his job is watching the way in which the proceeds of growth all to often disappear into inequality, corruption and Swiss bank accounts.

However, his key point was on investing style. Most investors, he said, start off thinking that investing is terribly simple. Then they start to think it is terribly complicated, but in the end they come round to realising that it really is "quite simple."

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.