The Great Debate UK

Is there a new breed of self-reliant investors?

-James Daly is TD Waterhouse Investor Centre Representative regarding investor confidence.  The opinions expressed are his own.-

Will the new decade herald the emergence of a new breed of self-reliant individual investors?

Some seem to think so according to TD Waterhouse’s annual Investor Confidence Survey of over 1,000 individual investors across the UK, with over half (53 percent) of respondents stating that they now rely more on their own decisions when making investment choices compared to just under a fifth (19 percent) who said they look more to professional advisers and brokers than they did last year.

This disparity reflects an increasing trend of self-reliance, which may suggest that retail investors have become a more sophisticated bunch as they adapt to today’s unpredictable financial markets.

Lehman sparks a year of trading opportunities

-Angus Rigby is CEO of TD Waterhouse. The opinions expressed are his own.-

Volatility has been the name of the game since Lehman’s collapse, an event which sent shock waves through the global financial markets. The ripple effect on correlated sectors sent share prices on a roller coaster ride of unpredictable fluctuations throughout the year – and yet at the same time this very volatility paved the way for the profit-taking retail trader, if they got their timing right of course.

Volatility, a dirty word for the long term investor, has been the fuel driving traders who successfully shorted on peaks and bought on lows. Even the Bank of England cutting rates by 1.5 percent to 3 – the biggest single cut since 1992 – failed to slow down individual traders. In fact, in many ways, this has been The Year of the Retail Investor.