ANOTHER DECADE OF CHANGE
Summary
Most (almost all) financial advisers all worked on a commission, the regulator (FSA) and its Chief Executive were still fending off criticism about mishandling the credit crunch, whilst working to implement new standards for advisers, which wouldn’t be implemented for another 3 years. We have lived with base rates of less than 1% for a decade (all that wasted money in Cash ISAs!). The top Unit Trust returned 684% over the decade (ending 2009) it happened to be a fund investing in gold. At the start of the relevant time period, the then UK Chancellor was at the beginning of Government policy (1999-2002) to sell off UK Gold reserves like they were a bad disease, the price of gold was rock bottom at the time. That’s a huge difference, and of course only something most didn’t achieve, for few investors had the stomach for gold when tech was the best game in town.