Best Sunday Papers for Finance

dunstonh

Financial Mail will tend to highlight things like 7% commission paid to some advisors on some WP bonds, which obviously doesn't endear it to responsible IFAs like dh as it can give IFAs a bad name.

I fail to see why my status as an IFA has anything to do with my views on the Daily Mail. They have made terrible errors in their reporting and are often totally one sided. They are a cynical paper for the cynical individual. If the cap fits, you will love Daily Mail. Ahh, that explains your reponse RI

If the reporting was balanced I would have no problems with them at all.

As it happens, most financial reports in the papers seem to do the rounds changing a little bit here and there each time. What you see in one will appear in the other within a fortnight.

You get far more from this site than you do any newspaper.

ReportInvestor

Both I and an earlier poster were talking about Financial Mail on Sunday, not the Daily Mail.

The OP asked about Sunday papers.

Why not stay on topic, rather than let fly with casual insults?

dunstonh

Why not stay on topic, rather than let fly with casual insults?

You effectively accused me of bias. I found that pretty insulting as I cannot see how me being an IFA has anything to do with me commenting on the quality or lack of quality of certain newspapers. I would be equally critical of a number of the industry papers at times for almost the same reasons. If you can't take the responses to your comments, then you shouldnt make any comment.

Paul_Herring

dunstonh wrote:

The Mail is probably the worst offender for information being used incorrectly, supporting advertisers and relying on past performance.

They were advocating people using tech stocks after they had already gone up. Anyone following the Mail's advice would need around 900% growth from their current position just to get their money back. They also compared tech stocks to corporate bonds and how much better tech stocks had performed. No mention of the massive risk difference between the very low risk corporate funds to the very very high risk tech funds. There are more but those two in particular were very bad.

Given points raised in subsequent posts, could you clarify whether you are talking about Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, or both here DH? (Not that I'd buy either anyway, but would be interested to know.)

dunstonh

Given points raised in subsequent posts, could you clarify whether you are talking about Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, or both here DH? (Not that I'd buy either anyway, but would be interested to know.)

I tend to treat the Sunday versions the same as the weekdays. I know they may have differences in some areas but if they come out of the same stable, then the philosophy of them is going to be the same.

schiff

Whilst the advent of Financial supplements and Personal Money sections in newspapers generally can only have been a good thing, they did set themselves an almost impossible task ie. achieving some level of variety from week to week.

There is only so much guff you can churn out about Unit Trusts, credit cards, current accounts, pension provision, etc and ultimately it just becomes boring and repetitive, with perhaps an odd useful and informative snippet here and there.

One thing I have noticed is that newspapers seem to engage financial advisers to more or less write their own opinions in articles and the newspaper columnists don't seem to provide much themselves. Hargreaves Lansdown and Bestinvest are two that spring to mind where comments or recommendations are attributed directly to them.

Concerning my blasting of the DM:I would like to mention a columnist called Alexander (forget his first name) who has been writing leaders in the DM or MoS for years. I always think he is very well worth reading (if you can find the paper at someone else's house!).

Mr_Mumble

No need to pay for dead trees. Some more links to Sunday money sections:

Sunday Times Money & Business Sections.
Observer
Thisismoney.co.uk (articles from The Mail, Sunday Mail, Evening Standard).

Just looking at weekend money sections piecemeal won't get you a rounded view of investment options in a short period of time. Its difficult to compare options just reading each article which will mainly focus on one investment type and not do a proper comparison with others. I still like the money sections though, the opinion pieces especially.

There is only so much guff you can churn out about Unit Trusts, credit cards, current accounts, pension provision, etc and ultimately it just becomes boring and repetitive, with perhaps an odd useful and informative snippet here and there

Agree to an extent but there is a lot more variety that can be talked about. The Sunday Times this week had a big piece on woodland and there was even stuff about uranium demand and production.

ReportInvestor

schiff wrote:

Concerning my blasting of the DM:I would like to mention a columnist called Alexander (forget his first name) who has been writing leaders in the DM or MoS for years. I always think he is very well worth reading (if you can find the paper at someone else's house!).

Andrew Alexander appears in the Standard or Daily Mail - not the Mail on Sunday AFAIK. He does have a wealth of experience and is not afraid to take a contrarian view.

I knew his brother (not a journalist) very well. Another no nonsense person with his feet on the ground.

dunstonh wrote:

I tend to treat the Sunday versions the same as the weekdays. I know they may have differences in some areas but if they come out of the same stable, then the philosophy of them is going to be the same.

I treat the Financial Mail on Sunday and the Daily Mail as separate organs - even though they are housed in the same building.

To take one example, their approach to mutuality couldn't be more different. [Daily Mail - Mutuality is good, period. Financial Mail - Is this company (mutual or Plc) giving value to its customers?]

And obviously they are trying to scoop each other all the time.

But perhaps their shared financial online website will bring them closer together over time.

ReportInvestor

schiff wrote:

One thing I have noticed is that newspapers seem to engage financial advisers to more or less write their own opinions in articles and the newspaper columnists don't seem to provide much themselves.

This strikes me as very true of several Sunday Times lead stories. They pick a market (often one that has done well & is in the news) and then ask the "experts" to give views from the bull and bear points of view. Other standard "experts" include fund managers and brokers.

payless

No one thinks much of the columnists in the Sunday Express then !.. or is it the Saturday Guardian these days