I admit that this is written with a lot of emotion but there have got to be few things that are worse for investors than life insurance savings products. Whether they are endowment policies or retirement annuities (new age or traditional) they have got to be the worst thing that an investor can buy! I just cant understand how in 2009, when research shows that the average person will change jobs at least half dozen times during their working...

Just been reading the article about Old Mutual’s new credit card where the reward is an innovative “units in their money market unit trust fund”. On the face of it this is a great rewards offering…but do the maths and I cant believe how OM can get it so wrong so often. They are offering an Amex card and a Visa card with the Amex card offering a higher reward than the Visa card – problem is that there are still many places that...

5th Aug 2009 The Ovation Curatorship saga continues…the court case that was scheduled for yesterday has been postponed yet again, this time to Sep 3 (but I wont be holding my breath). This is unbelievably frustrating and emotionally draining (I write this as both a financial planner dealing with clients as well as an investor in Ovation). Just so you know, we have been writing to the regulators and curators fairly often but have...

I cant help but think that with the markets having run as hard as they have since their lows in November last year and March this year (JSE is up >34% since then) that either we have been duped into believing there was a huge crisis which never actually existed and have now missed the best buying opportunity (perhaps ever), or else, the crisis is not over, the issues have not suddenly gone away and things have not returned to normal as...