Our content this month are as follows:-

• More Clarity - Plain English Campaign
• Troubled Markets - Bad News for Investors?
• Books We Have Read
• The Princess Royal Trust for Carers
• Quotes of the Month

We are now the proud owners of a Plain English Campaign Crystal Mark for one of our most used documents - the Investment Plan. This is the first step in a campaign we started about six months ago to bring greater clarity to our communications with clients.

We are very grateful to Roger Tidball of Ginger Communications who has rewritten several of our documents, as well as the new website. Roger's help and guidance has been invaluable in preparing documents prior to submitting them to the Plain English Campaign. We expect to achieve the Crystal Mark for our Mutual Commitment Plan and website very soon and then will systematically go through our other documents with the same aim in mind. We plan to revisit each client’s investment plan over the next 12 months so you will have an opportunity to judge the improvements for yourself.

The Plain English Campaign has confirmed that we are the first Wealth Management or Independent Financial Adviser to achieve the Crystal Mark, something of which we are very proud.

There appears to be a lot of bad news around at the moment. Stock markets are volatile, commercial property is falling rapidly and the housing market boom is well and truly over. Many commentators believe we may be heading for recession, which, if it happens, will be the 3rd of the 15 they have forecast in the past 30 years!

It is interesting to consider the effect that recessions have on stock markets and we looked back at how markets performed during the recessions of the early 80s and early 90s.

The performance of the FTSE All Share Index during the early 1980s was as follows:-

1980 Up 35.4%
1981 Up 13.7%
1982 Up 29.2%
1983 Up 29.2%
1984 Up 32%

An average compound return of 27.7% per annum.
During the early 1990s:-

1991 Up 20.7%
1992 Up 20.5%
1993 Up 28.4%
1994 Down 5.9%
1995 Up 23.8%

An average compound return of 16.8% per annum.

What can we conclude from this? It is uncertainty that markets dislike; once the uncertainty goes it is business as usual. Do problems in other markets such as banking and property have an adverse affect on stock markets? It would appear not, as both of the previous recessions featured banking crises and stagnant or falling housing markets (the average house price in the UK dropped by 18.4% between 1989 and 1992 and did not recover in real terms until 1998).
The danger of being out of the market at times like this is not that you are forgoing the average of 10 or 11% compound annual growth you get in the long-term, it is that you may miss one of the major spikes that can occur without warning (see September's newsletter).

We are indebted to Mike Ames, Chief Executive of Crimson (website worth a visit - go to www.crimson.co.uk and hit the Flair button) for this month's recommendation. Les and Noel are attending one of Mike's courses and received Mike's recommended reading list. On the list is "How to Be Brilliant" and it is…………….. Brilliant! Those of you who used to watch the Fast Show might remember one of Paul Whitehouse's characters who thought everything was "brilliant" - he must have based the character on the author Michael Heppell!

From brilliant values discovery to brilliant goal setting and building brilliant teams this book is so filled with brilliant ideas it almost bursts. Our favourite section is the bit on the TV programme, The West Wing and meetings - you will laugh out loud. One of the tips in the book is to make decisions and then "take massive immediate action". So, go on, make a decision to buy it and do it now.

The book is available at bookstores in the UK and is on Amazon’s list; as usual if you have any difficulty finding it please contact jayne@indexwm.co.uk.

Les sits on the Midlands Committee of the Princess Royal Trust for Carers and sees first-hand the great work that they do. It will be one of the charities we support this Christmas and we are including some information about the trust and its work. If you would like to make a donation to the Trust the details of how to do so are below.

1 in 4 will become a carer at some point in their lifetime

A carer is somebody who looks after a friend or relative who may be disabled or seriously ill. People can become carers in a moment. A wife diagnosed with cancer. A child born with Down’s syndrome. A father develops Parkinson’s.

If it happened to you or your family, how would you cope?

Brenda is 80. For 50 years, her whole life has been given to caring for her daughter who has a mental age of only 21 months. Her husband has recently suffered a series of heart attacks and has undergone serious heart surgery. She now cares for him too.

Caring 24 hours a day, 7 days every week creates terrible strain.

It is not just the physical strain of doing everything for your loved one, but more the emotional strain of never being able to leave someone because you fear that something will happen to them when you are not there. Brenda has had this fear for 50 years. As a result carers are often:

• In danger of self harm or even suicide
• Depressed and unable to cope
• Suffering long term illnesses themselves

The Princess Royal Trust for Carers supports over 300,000 carers, including 15,500 carers who are only children. We have 133 centres placed all over the UK, including 11 in the Midlands.

With our centres we are a lifeline for people like Brenda.

• Giving carers desperately needed respite breaks
• Providing vital equipment and relief
• One-to-one crisis support & counselling
• Running special projects for carers who are children

If you become a carer, we want to be there for you and your family.

Make a donation with Gift Aid:
£500: 5 carers can receive dedicated support all year round
£1000: 20 carers could get emergency one-to-one support when they can no longer cope
£5000: 50 young carers could get a vital weekend break to get their childhood back

Share-giving: If some of your shares are generating more paperwork than they are worth, we can turn them into something really valuable; extra help for carers and it’s tax efficient too.

Leave a gift in your will: By speaking to your solicitor about drawing up or updating your will, you can make a huge difference to carers.

Company Charity of the Year: Does your company give to charity or have a CSR? Or maybe a fundraising event could help morale and team spirit?


Contact Gordon Conochie: 0141 285 7936 or gconochie@carers.org
The Princess Royal Trust for Carers, 3 City Arcade, Coventry, CV1 3HX www.carers.org

"Men go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."

Charles Mackay, author of "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds."

"I don’t let my mouth say nothin' my head can’t stand."

Louis Armstrong