Is Aim finally coming of age?

The Aim market of mostly smaller companies has traditionally been seen as a bit of a backwater. Is it time to change that view? Matthew Partridge talks to Paul Latham and Richard Power of fund management company Octopus.

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The market for smaller companies is all grown up
(Image credit: © 2018 Bloomberg Finance LP)

The Aim market (formerly the Alternative Investment Market)has traditionally been seen as a bit of a backwater. It was launched in 1995 in attempt to give smaller companies that were poorly served by the main market of the London Stock Exchange a chance to raise capital by going public. However, up until recently, it's proved to be a bit of a dud, notorious for being the haven for illiquid, sometimes dodgy, companies. For example, if you put £1,000 into the FTSE All-share index it would now be worth £5,003, while the same sum invested in Aim would only have grown to £1,390 less than a third of that amount.

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Dr Matthew Partridge
Shares editor, MoneyWeek

Matthew graduated from the University of Durham in 2004; he then gained an MSc, followed by a PhD at the London School of Economics.

He has previously written for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian and the Economist, and also helped to run a newsletter on terrorism. He has spent time at Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and the consultancy Lombard Street Research.

Matthew is the author of Superinvestors: Lessons from the greatest investors in history, published by Harriman House, which has been translated into several languages. His second book, Investing Explained: The Accessible Guide to Building an Investment Portfolio, is published by Kogan Page.

As senior writer, he writes the shares and politics & economics pages, as well as weekly Blowing It and Great Frauds in History columns He also writes a fortnightly reviews page and trading tips, as well as regular cover stories and multi-page investment focus features.

Follow Matthew on Twitter: @DrMatthewPartri