Want to lose all your money? Invest in an IPO

If you feel yourself getting swept up in the excitement of a new disruptive stock coming to market, watch out. Buying into an IPO nearly always involves losing money, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

The idea that the majority of the companies you know by name will disappear within a couple of decades is now standard stuff.

In this view, our oil companies will soon vanish under climate pressure and the rise of solar energy. Our retailers are barely breathing and regular car-makers are likely to buckle under the better technology (and more creative thinking) of the Teslas of the world.

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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.