By and large, they were reduced to relying on momentum, which means hoping more people will keep coming in to buy. We were too heavily in growth funds, so we interviewed the managers of the technology funds we were in and asked them to explain why they thought the shares in that sector were going to keep going up. We sold out of technology funds in March 2000, which I admit was a slice of luck, but, as Napoleon might have said, ‘Bring me lucky fund managers’.”It did follow from our aim to be balanced. “We take the fear and greed out of the investment decision for them. That’s one reason our Isa sales rose by 214 per cent year-on-year in the last tax year. One that claims to have done well is Edinburgh Portfolio, the London-based fund-of-funds arm of the troubled Edinburgh Fund Managers, which had to abort a merger with Hermes, the fund manager for the mighty Post Office and British Telecom pension funds.
It may be a telling comment on investors’ ability to see through hype that they have flocked to the fund-of-funds approach, where a manager invests in other funds rather than picking shares directly, or the heavily publicised, protected and guaranteed products which have flooded on to the market in the past six months.”Now is the time to build up a balanced portfolio but I think people prefer a strategy they can understand,” Paul Talbot, managing director of Edinburgh Portfolio, says.

Moneynet The 2001-2 Isa season was so dismal that any fund management group which bucked the trend had to be doing something different. The 2001-2 Isa season was so dismal that any fund management group which bucked the trend had to be doing something different. For those of us who think the Haiders, Le Pens and other neo-Nazi nuts running around on the continent will do nothing for anyone the bounce can’t come too soon.s.o’grady independent.co.uk. I notice the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is forecasting growth in the American economy of 2.5 per cent this year, rising to 3.5 per cent in 2003, so it might well be worth all our whiles looking to the US for more investment opportunities.Especially given that the electoral breakthrough by Monsieur Le Pen highlights the relative fragility of the eurozone economies, where the OECD reckons growth will run at 1.3 per cent this year, although they think it will jump back to 2.9 per cent next year. Scottish and Newcastle, bought pre-Budget at about 590p, has proved an inspired choice, sitting at 620p last time I looked McDonald’s Corporation is steady. Otherwise, zilch.I’m glad to say the old economy component of the portfolio is holding up reasonably well.

Analysts recommend that investors sell the shares, adding that if they close the loss-making German business the valuation would rise to 24p. That unfortunate billing has now been awarded to mmO2 the absurdly renamed old Cellnet subsidiary of BT which was spun out of its parent this year.Despite its unfamiliar name I guess there must still be a good few private BT shareholders who like me decided to take the mmO2 shares and even buy a few more at the time of the demerger. Vodafone’s most important European markets are Britain, Germany and Italy. Over these countries, average revenues per user (ARPU) in the UK and Italy were broadly stable at £276 ($400) and €345 ($307) respectively, and slipped €5 to €298 in Germany compared to figures released at the end of December.Reasons to be cheerful? Not much among that lot, except to say that when the next-generation services come along they may well create extra revenues and improve those average revenue figures. But as around 70 per cent of Europeans already own mobile phones, market focus has switched firmly on to customer revenues Here the picture is very much an “ex-growth” one. For what it’s worth, that’s below analyst forecasts of up to 1.9 million.Vodafone is still a big player, with a global customer base of 101.1 million, and can still forecast a return of net customer growth in all major European markets in the second quarter of this financial year.

Some of it is down to the general malaise affecting the whole telecoms industry, but much of it is also all too specific to Vodafone. You do wonder how long a company’s shares can go on losing roughly 3 per cent of their value per day Sooner or later it must end. I need hardly add that he is referring to the Vodafone share-holding experience. Despite all the negative comment I still cannot believe that Vodafone “is the new Marconi” in the way that brown is/was the new black or that, in television, “history is the new gardening”.
Even so it has been a dispiriting week. I rang the number on the screen and got someone straight away who sounded like Jane Horrocks when she’s playing up the Northern.