Edward Chancellor: the biggest mistake analysts make

Trying to forecast demand is a waste of time, according to financial historian and strategist Edward Chancellor. The secret to successful investing is to focus on supply.

Trying to forecast demand is a waste of time, according to financial historian and strategist Edward Chancellor. The secret to successful investing is to focus on supply.

Most investors get everything wrong. That's the key message that came out of my recent interview with Edward Chancellor. They look at valuations worrying endlessly about price/earnings (p/e) ratios and price-to-book (p/b) ratios. But they never think about the capital cycle the way investment flows in and out of sectors, and the one thing that really matters.

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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.