Record — each item is independently checkable

Writing — Financial Times columnist. Author of 18 books on investing and markets.

Broadcast — Former presenter, Bloomberg television.

Markets — Hedge fund manager. Founder of the Great Investments Programme.

Public service — UK Government Dealmaker, Global Entrepreneur Programme. Appointed OBE in 2020.

Academic — Visiting Fellow, University of Oxford.

Regulated firm — Praefinium Partners, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Why this site exists

Most people in Britain hand their retirement to someone else and never check the result. They could not tell you what their pension returned last year, what it cost them in fees, or how either compares to a simple index. That is not a failing of intelligence. It is a failing of information, and the information has been kept deliberately dull.

I started writing here because the questions that worry people are good questions, and they rarely get a straight answer. Why is my pension only growing a few percent a year. Is my wealth manager worth what I pay. Can I actually retire on what I have. These deserve numbers and evidence, not reassurance.

What I do, and what I don't

I teach people how to think about their own money: how to read a fund factsheet, how to judge performance against the right benchmark, how to tell a fair fee from a quietly ruinous one. That is education and mentoring. It is the work of the Great Investments Programme, and it is the purpose of everything published here.

I do not tell you which investments to buy or sell. I do not manage your money through this site, and nothing here is a personal recommendation. Those are regulated activities with a different bar, and I am careful to stay the right side of the line. When you need regulated advice tailored to your circumstances, you should speak to an authorised adviser.

How I look at markets

My approach is quantitative rather than instinctive. The method screens thousands of global companies on measures that have tended to matter: cash returns on capital, risk-adjusted return, the price you pay for growth. The point is not to predict the future. It is to load the odds, stay disciplined, and let time and compounding do the heavy lifting. The articles on this site explain those ideas one at a time, in language that assumes no prior training.

ON TRUSTING ANY OF THIS​

You should not take my word for the claims above, and you do not have to. Each line in the record can be checked against public sources. Where this site quotes a figure, it cites where the figure came from, and the figures are confirmed against primary sources such as gov.uk and HMRC at the time of writing. Rules and numbers change, so always check the date on an article.