What makes a great long-term stock? In terms of a single lump sum investment, my answer to that would be three things coming together at the same time: high quality profits, strong future growth and a cheap starting valuation. Think something like Microsoft stock a decade ago, trading on a PE of 11. Visa on a PE of 15 at the same time is another…

By and large, UK stocks continue to strike me as a pretty good long-term deal right now. I know folks have probably been reading something similar for a while now, but the headline numbers do look reasonable. I mean, looking at some ETF data suggests that London-listed firms trade on a PE of around 12 right now. Meanwhile, across the pond the S&P 500 currently…

After a strong start to the year, the third quarter proved a more muted one for developed market stocks. A quick scan of the Vanguard fund range implies that the S&P 500 was barely positive, with the Developed World UCITS ETF (which aims to track the FTSE Developed Index) showing modest losses last quarter. Inflation continues to garner a lot of debate. That is partly…

It has been 18 months since I started the Trading212 regular investing account. That was supplemented by another drip-feeder using a Halifax ShareBuilder account. At this point, I’ve decided to make two changes (or rather, two additions). Firstly, I’m going to start reporting the five US equities that I cover on The Compound Investor too. They sit in the same T212 account and were only…

This is a very late review, coming two-thirds into the third quarter and all, but better late than never. UK equities posted a decent quarter in Q2, albeit not as good as the S&P 500. I’m using Vanguard’s FTSE U.K. All Share Index Unit Trust as a proxy, with Q2 total returns for that vehicle at around 5.6%. Now, I did mess up slightly with…