Joe Wiggins

Author Archive

  • Sep 17, 2025
    High yield credit spreads are tight. At the time of writing, the US index trades at a spread of 279 over Treasuries. 
  • Sep 10, 2025
    It seems a fair bet that in a few years’ time we will come to see the two most dangerous words in investing as “democratisation” and “innovation”. 
  • Sep 3, 2025
    As an investment theme AI has it all: the potential for transformational societal and economic change, huge capital investment and the prospect of dramatic corporate winners and...
  • Aug 8, 2025
    Meetings change the way we think and therefore, the types of decisions we make.
  • Jul 31, 2025
    The rise of private markets has been supported by the perceived existence of an ‘illiquidity premium’ – or the extra return provided to investors as compensation...
  • Jul 25, 2025
    Most financial market debate and discussion amounts to people shouting at each other in different languages.
  • Jul 16, 2025
    There are three types of investors: momentum, valuation and noise. 
  • Jun 25, 2025
    One of my favourite Daniel Kahneman quotes is: “Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it”. 
  • Jun 19, 2025
    Other things equal, a higher valuation for an asset should make it less attractive. Returns are being pulled from the future to the present. So why does the reverse often seem to be...
  • Jun 11, 2025
    Is Warren Buffett attempting to ‘time the market’ by holding over $300bn in cash? 
  • Jun 4, 2025
    In recent years, the idea of a behaviour gap in investing has become commonplace. Although there are several ways of defining what this actually means, it is most typically used to...
  • May 14, 2025
    It is important to think carefully about our investment philosophy – defining what we believe about investing is critical to good decision making. 
  • May 8, 2025
    You are running a multi-asset portfolio and know for certain that over the next five years there is a 20% chance of an occurrence that will cause it to suffer severe losses. What do...
  • Apr 23, 2025
    Back in December, I wrote a piece expressing concerns about the ubiquity and strength of the “US exceptionalism” narrative.
  • Apr 9, 2025
    Bear markets bring about increased risk but perhaps not in the way we might think. Sharp declines in equity markets create incredibly high levels of behavioural risk. 
  • Apr 8, 2025
    When equity markets are rising it is really easy to stick with the key principles required to be a successful long-term investor; unfortunately, it gets far harder when they start to...
  • Apr 4, 2025
    For anyone interested in investor behaviour, extremes matter. 
  • Mar 26, 2025
    Earnings by themselves don't tell the whole story.
  • Mar 19, 2025
    You can't have one without the other.
  • Mar 12, 2025
    We were wrong then but we'll be right this time. Um, no.
  • Mar 5, 2025
    At the 1998 shareholder meeting for Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett said: “We try to think about two things: things that are important and things that are...
  • Feb 20, 2025
    Humans hate uncertainty. 
  • Feb 12, 2025
    One of the key challenges faced by investors aiming to generate long-term returns with a diversified portfolio is ‘line-item thinking’. 
  • Jan 29, 2025
    Most of the issues that dominate the day to day news flow doesn't matter for investors. 
  • Jan 23, 2025
    Investing is hard, and for many reasons.
  • Jan 16, 2025
    There has never been a better time to be an investor. We have unprecedented choice, transparency and control. There has also never been a worse time to be an investor. We have...
  • Jan 10, 2025
    As you may have gathered by now, I am a little sceptical of financial market forecasts. That does not mean, however, that the formation of expectations is not a fascinating...