After a 15 year wait the FTSE 100 finally managed to clamber back to an all time high of 6,958 points this week. And according to Professors Elroy Dimson and Paul Marsh and Dr Mike Staunton of London Business School, there's now a 50/50 chance of it hitting 10,000 points by 2022. But does any of this matter? Not according to John Authers in the FT, who points out that the global nature of the companies in the 100 index reflect very little about the health or otherwise of the UK economy. Far better, he says, to look to the FTSE 250 as a gauge of domestic prosperity. Moreover, the FTSE 250 has churned out a 10.3% annual return over the past 15 years versus a more modest 3.4% from the FTSE 100.

This week at Stockopedia we revisited some of the arguments for introducing a few rebalancing rules into a factor-focused portfolio. And our small-cap expert Paul Scott was kept busy analysing numerous stock updates, with reviews of the likes of Tungsten and Zytronic.

Around the web

Ben Carlson at A Wealth of Common Sense offered some observations from a decade in the investment business. Barry Ritholz came up with 10 simple truths that many investors ignore and Josh Brown, the Reformed Broker, wrote a great blog on the subject of scarcity.

There's a super article here by Todd Wenning on how to research small cap dividend-paying stocks, and a list here of five questions to ask before each trade by Adam Grimes of Waverly Advisors Research. Matthew Yglesias of Vox writes about the fact that some European government and corporate bonds have gone negative - and why it's the the economics equivalent of stumbling into a huge scientific discovery entirely by accident.

Morgan Housel at TMF looks at the disastrously bad predictions of market strategists, why people listen to these forecasters and why they are so bad. Then there is Tim Richards, who examines why human biology could be to blame for our investment shortcomings in Novelty, Unicorns and the Stressed Investor. And Terry Smith, who routinely preaches the importance of business quality, writes here about why you should invest in good companies.

Finally, this week saw the passing of Wall Street's oldest active investor,…

Unlock the rest of this article with a 14 day trial

Already have an account?
Login here