Why you should stay away from the Alternative Investment Market

The Alternative Investment Market might look like home to a few bargains right now, but it's still not worth investing in, explains Merryn Somerset-Webb.

Around this time last year, the nation's investment experts all started to point out how cheap the big FTSE 100 stocks looked and to suggest that we all switched out of smaller companies and into blue chips.

It wouldn't have been a bad idea. In the last year, the junior Alternative Investment Market (Aim) index has fallen around 14 per cent while the FTSE 100 is down only 6.5 per cent. Admittedly, you'd have been better off in cash you'd have made 5 per cent there. But, relatively speaking, at least the experts were right.

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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.