Just inherited £100k......

Daniel_Elkington

Or ask the IFA about their 'research methodology'. If they look blank and say that they outsource to... They either haven't a clue or they have been told by their company to outsource.

If they suddenly get bright eyed and start talking about crown ratings, alpha managers, alpha, beta, sharpe, info ratios, volatility, r-squared, rolling yields, asset allocation, satellite and core investment strategies, diversification within a risk based framework and more (don't want to go on, already done 10,000 words on ours!) then they may have a clue, although they could just be regurgitating what they have been told to say.

http://www.trustnet.com/Education/Ratio.aspx?ms=0 here is a good guide on performance ratio's. Skandia do a really good table which summarises all the investment houses outlook on markets over the next year but it says financial advisers only on it, sorry.