You can buy gilts directly via the Debt Management Office which has subcontracted its consumer service to Computershare. Otherwise, you can buy individual gilts via a stockbroker to be held directly, or within a Self Select Isa and Sipp.

Alternatively, you can buy via a fund although this is an expensive way to buy gilts as you will have to pay the fund manager’s annual management charge, which leaves little room for profit.

While the yield payable by a gilt it fixed, its face value will fluctuates in response to supply and demand and economic factors, such as changes in Bank rate and inflation. For instance, you could purchase a gilt maturing in 2020, yielding 4.4 per cent on 4 November for £100.05, while its price today is £105.92, reflecting the fact that Bank rate is expected to fall to 2.5 per cent this week.

However, if Bank rate were to rise in subsequent years, the face value of the gilt might fall, so it is up to you to decide whether you should sell or hold the gilt to maturity. In the meantime, the 4.4 per cent fixed yield continues to be paid twice a year.

While most instant savings accounts are paying anything between 1-4 per cent, and are expected to fall further, a fixed yield of 4.4 per cent looks relatively attractive, particularly with the 100 per cent security provided by the government.

For more on gilts visit Dmo.gov.uk. For more on stockbroking services check Defacto Share Dealing

By Steve Johnson

Momentum investing in equity markets delivers “striking” and “remarkably persistent” excess returns, according to the most comprehensive study to date of the phenomenon.

Yet the study’s highly regarded authors, Elroy Dimson, Paul Marsh and Mike Staunton of the London Business School, confessed to being “puzzled” by the findings, which fly in the face of a belief in efficient markets. “As a measure of abnormal performance it is quite striking,” said Mr Dimson, BGI professor of investment management at LBS.

Mr Marsh, emeritus professor of finance, added: “It’s puzzling. You shouldn’t be able to make money that easily just by ranking stocks in order.”

The research, published as part of ABN Amro’s latest Global Investment Returns Yearbook, used data series stretching back to 1900 to examine the efficacy of systematic momentum investing; simply buying the stocks that had performed best over a prior time period and shorting those that had performed worst.

For example, using data on the UK’s 100 largest stocks since 1900, the team created two portfolios, one based on the 20 best-performing equities in the previous 12 months and the other the 20 worst performers. These portfolios were then re-calculated every month. The portfolio of winners produced compound annual returns of 15.2 per cent, turning £1 into more than £4.2m (€5.6m, $8.2m) by the end of 2007. In contrast, the portfolio of laggards returned just 4.5 per cent a year, turning £1 into £111.

The gulf was wider when the team used data from the entire London market since 1955; the portfolio based on the previous 12 month’s best-performing stocks returned 18.3 per cent a year, against 6.8 per cent for the erstwhile worst performers. When the portfolios were constructed on an equal-weighted, rather than market cap-weighted basis, the divide was starker.

This momentum premium also appeared to hold across borders; Messrs Dimson, Marsh and Staunton found positive returns from each of the 16 other countries they crunched post-2000 data for, with winners outperforming losers by 4 per cent a year in the US, 21 per cent in France and 39 per cent in Germany.

Last year the premium was “astonishingly strong”, according to Prof Marsh. Despite speculation that quantitative hedge funds, many of them momentum-driven, had suffered as market leadership switched from small-cap value to large-cap growth stocks, the momentum premium rocketed, with a long-winners, short-losers portfolio returning 50 per cent or more in Canada, the Netherlands, France, Denmark and Germany and 32 per cent in the US.

An investment approach based on this strategy - buying top performing stocks and shorting the laggards - would not be straightforward to execute. The research found portfolios need to be turned over regularly, adding to transaction costs, while smaller stocks may be difficult to short.

However, the academics argue it has widespread repercussions, with virtually every investment manager either betting in favour of momentum - from trendfollowing hedge fund managers to long-only managers who let winners run while cutting losers and engaging in “window dressing” of their portfolio - or, in the shape of small cap or value investors, betting against it.

“Every investor we have come across has, explicitly or implicitly, used a momentum or counter-momentum strategy,” said Prof Marsh. “[Consequently] people can look like a genius by accident or they can look a fool when they are quite smart.

“Active managers who ignore the momentum effect do so at their peril.”

The findings appear to run counter to a welter of studies, including the ABN yearbook, which suggest that small cap and value strategies tend to outperform over time, adding to the mystery.

“It is a very simple strategy, buying winners and selling losers. In a well functioning market it ought not to work,” said Prof Marsh. “We remain puzzled and we are not the only ones; most academics are vaguely embarrassed about this.”

Published: Feb 18, 2008 Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

When businesses and compananies declare their VAT to their local inland revenue authorities, they need the VAT registration number of each customer. If you are an Adsense publisher, you may need to check that Google don’t pay you VAT included in their payments.

In the UK, for instance, all traders registered for VAT who supply goods to traders registered for VAT in other European Union countries are required to provide lists of their EC supplies. These supplies are declared on an EC Sales List (ESL).  Services, like Google Adsense’s, are not subject to this requirement.

In fact, the country code of Google’s VAT number, “EU”, isn’t included in the list of acceptable country codes of the leaflet “EC SALES LIST HELPFUL HINTS (ESL7)” of the HM Revenue & Customs.

The Inland Revenues’ ESL Unit (ESL Correction Unit, VIES Operations, 3SW Queens Dock, Liverpool, L74 4AA) confirmed that there is not a country involved in the EC that has the country code EU.

We provide a list of You will want check the SWIFT codes below before carrying out any transaction, the list below is not official, http://www.mintme.com is not liable to this information and you can only use it at your own risk:

You may also check the official register at Banco de España

The Air Transport Users Council published in 2007 that British Airways mishandles the baggage of 23 passengers in 1,000. In other words, the chances are that at least 5 passengers in an average plane will have their baggage mishandled by BA!

Not only the loss or damage is unsettling: wasting time queueing to claim your baggage, waiting to have the baggage delivered for days, calling an indetermined number of time to get updates about the baggage, buying basic items that were left in the baggage, etc. The liability for baggage delay is limited to approximately EUR1,000 or £800 (1,000 SDRs) upon the Montreal Convention.

The liabilities notice of British Airways do not specify which are the criteria to claim and to reimburse compensation for mishandled luggage and their only available information is deliberately blurred, since they are not legally obliged to do so. Neither they specify for how long you can claim compensation after they mishandled the luggage. Ugh’s Greymatter Honeypot stated yesterday that you can claim back for more than one year surprises me, for some reason I thought that you have only 15 days to claim from the day of the incident.

British Airways site has an online lost baggage claim form which it not followed by a confirmation of the submission by email or with a letter. I keep a template for my claims and it works, so you may just print it or save for your next flight. I hope that you don’t need it:


[Date]
[Name]
[First line address]
[Town]
[Postcode]
British Airways
Baggage Claims Unit (S506)
PO Box 5619
Sudbury
Suffolk
CO10 2PG
RE: Lost baggage claim File Reference:
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am writing to you in connection with the above claim of [date].
This is my formal request for you to send me a cheque with compensation for every day without my baggage and for the expenses I incurred in due to your loss of my baggage to a total of [Euro/GBP]. I attach copies of the invoices for items such as toiletries, underware, , etc.
The flight code was from the airport . The baggage was delivered two days later at an address in . I refer to the form I filled on for further details.
I look forward to receiving the compensation that I am entitled to within the next 10 working days
Yours faithfully,
Name


You may download the template of Lost baggage claim.

It British Airways lost or delayed your baggage, not let 21 days pass and claim all the expenses you incurred in. Don’t expect an explanation of the incident and far less an apology frin British Airways, but to claim your cheque!

The alternative is using one of the currency specialists popular among expats and retired people with investments abroad. We analyse some of the most popular currency brokers:

HiFX plc

is winning the battle of brand awareness. Google Trends shows a faster growing frequency of Hifx in comparison to Moneycorp in queries recorded by the search engine.

The Financial Services Authority in the UK doesn’t show any entry in the disciplinary history for HiFX PLC (462444).

The Financial Services Authority in the UK doesn’t show any entry in the disciplinary history for TTT Moneycorp Limited (308919).

Other services:

• Currencies Direct, www.currenciesdirect.com
• Caxton FX, www.caxtonfx.com
• Foreign Currencies Direct www.currencies.co.uk
• Travelex www.travelex.com
• Capital IFX, www.capitalifx.com

However, in the same period the differential between the UK rate of interest and the EU is practically identical.

Source: defactoblog.com

Which is another indication of how less relevant are interest rates to the real economy and of the loss of prestige of the UK economy in general.