Sticking your head in the sand is not an option

The Woodford debacle has made many people who are already nervous of the stockmarkets think that investing is not worth it. But most of us need to provide for our own financial future. And investing is the beast way to do that.

Neil Woodford © Shutterstock

Neil Woodford: all over bar the shouting
(Image credit: Neil Woodford © Shutterstock)

With the collapse this week of Woodford Investment Management, the fall from grace of the man once fted as Britain's best fund manager is pretty much over, bar the shouting. I look at the fallout in more detail in this week's magazine, but what worries me (and lots of other financial writers) right now is that people will take the wrong lesson from the Woodford debacle.

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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.