Merryn Talks Money

Latest Episodes:

How This Fund Manager Finds ‘Diamonds in the Dust’ Oct 11, 2024

Show notes

Don’t meet with management, ignore narratives and avoid highly rated businesses—taken together that sounds like a recipe for fund failure. But for Sean Peche, founder and portfolio manager at Ranmore Fund Management Ltd., it’s how he’s consistently outperformed benchmark indices. His Ranmore Global Equity Fund outperformed the MSCI World Index in 2022 and 2023. He joins Merryn this week to talk about his strategy and his market outlook.
(Earlier podcast summary incorrectly identified the fund as a hedge fund. It is a long only fund.)

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A Discomforting Signal From the UK Bond Market and Budget, Budget, Budget! Oct 09, 2024

Show notes

In this week's roundup, Money Distilled newsletter author John Stepek is joined by Bloomberg Opinion columnist Marcus Ashworth. They discuss the UK bond market, particularly the fact that UK 10-year yields are back above those of the US, what signal that sends and what's behind UK borrowing costs going up.

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How Safe Is Your Pension Pot? Oct 08, 2024

Show notes

On this personal finance edition of Merryn Talks Money, hosts Merryn Somerset Webb and John Stepek discuss diversifying your UK pension.

They lay out scenarios in which your pension could be at risk, and the extent to which it would be protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. And it’s not just important for pensions: these should be considerations for anyone with investments in passive funds and individual savings accounts (ISAs), Webb and Stepek say. Also on this episode, they tackle monitoring your broker’s solvency and how to gauge whether you would have “political protection” should they go bust.

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How The World Lost Its Mind with Author Dan Davies Oct 04, 2024

Show notes

Author and former Bank of England regulatory economist Dan Davies joins this week to discuss his new book, The Unaccountability Machine, which describes how the cost of large organisations deferring decision-making is a widening “accountability sink.”
As companies grow more complicated, the bigger the “sink” gets, he argues. “We’ve reached a crisis point.”

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UK Housing Perks Up, China's Bazooka Stimulus Sparks a Stock Rally Oct 02, 2024

Show notes

In this week's roundup, Merryn and Money Distilled newsletter author John Stepek discuss the stock market response to China's unprecedented stimulus package, where we are now with the UK housing market, and who stands to benefit from the rally in prices and sales.

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Pensions Are Another Reason to Worry About the UK Budget Oct 01, 2024

Show notes

On this week’s personal finance edition of Merryn Talks Money, hosts Merryn Somerset Webb and John Stepek discuss pension drawdown with Tom McPhail, formerly the lead pensions spokesman for the investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown. He also led an external review of the Money and Pensions Service on behalf of the UK government’s Department for Work and Pensions. They tackle what drawdown is and how to avoid getting ripped off.
But first, we have a look ahead to the autumn budget and what changes to pension pots could be on the horizon.

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Fund Manager Sees Energy Transition as Opportunity of a Lifetime Sep 27, 2024

Show notes

Foresight Group’s Bernard Fairman discusses the movement toward cleaner energy, a lucrative investment theme he sees playing out over 30 to 50 years.

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Roundup: Labour Party Conference 'Vibes,' Budget Fears, and Why We Should Care the Ultra-Rich are Leaving Sep 25, 2024

Show notes

In this week's roundup, Merryn and Money Distilled newsletter author John Stepek discuss why the looming UK Budget has both consumers and businesses rattled, and whether Labour's performance at its party conference in Liverpool is doing enough to address the nervousness around investing in --and even living in-- the UK. They also discuss whether the relationship between the taxpayer and government is broken, and what danger is posed if it is.

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How Amateur Investors Can Maximize Their Returns Sep 24, 2024

Show notes

How realistic is achieving a 20% annual return as an amateur investor? On this week’s personal finance edition of podcast Merryn Talks Money, it doesn’t take long for hosts Merryn Somerset Webb and John Stepek to come to the conclusion that consistently outperforming the likes of Berkshire Hathway in your free time is far from likely.

But the bigger question is how to set yourself a realistic but rewarding goal in the first place. On this episode, Webb and Stepek take personal investors back to the drawing board to discuss setting targets, picking a portfolio and—most importantly—avoiding panic.

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Looking to Outperform? Sell the US and Buy the UK Sep 20, 2024

Show notes

Looking for long-term outperformance? Sell the US and buy the UK. That’s the view of Fidelity’s Alex Wright, who joins this week’s Merryn Talks Money. As Wright points out, the UK market is very good for a contrarian looking for value plus a little momentum.
Also in the episode, Wright discusses the opportunities in banks, life insurers and tobacco companies, and why he thinks Tesco is a good buy.

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