Our content this month are as follows:-

• Index Grand Prix - The Full Report
• The Press
• Books We Have Read
• Identity Theft
• Quote of the Month

As promised last month, a full report on the Index Grand Prix. Our winner this year was Kevin Harris-James of Irwin Mitchell solicitors with a barnstorming performance which involved collisions, thrills and spills. Kevin survived an early smash involving Patrick Farrelly (who was disqualified) and went on to win a "rerun" final, touching off Tom Williams and Jon Ratledge, who ran him very close in second and third respectively. Other finalists were Steve Winyard, Terry Duncan, Mike Yiannis and Derek Forde.

The team competition in the morning was won by Team 8 including Steve Winyard, Patrick Farrelly, Terry Duncan and Mike Veissid. Fastest lap in the morning was from Patrick Farrelly, who repeated the feat in the afternoon.

All in all, another highly successful day which gathers more support each year. Our thanks as usual to Jayne Vale and Sarah Butler especially who did a first-class job of organising the event.

Tax Schemes

A number of schemes have been brought to our attention in recent months and, given the Revenue's very aggressive attitude we continue to counsel caution. Our approach seemed to be endorsed by an article in the Sunday Times this month which pointed out that the pre-registration of a scheme with HRMC does not automatically confer approval. The article pointed out that the Revenue can simply adopt an attitude of "wait and see" from the point of view of the amount of tax this may cost them and subsequently challenge the scheme. This does not mean that the scheme will fail, but it does add a dimension that the promoters do not often mention.

The papers of the weekend of 29th October carried a story about certain high profile individuals who are alleged to have taken advantage of the rules surrounding charitable giving, particularly that concerning unwanted shares. No doubt it seemed like a very clever scheme when it was put to these individuals, but it is now being investigated and regardless of the result the perceived abuse of charitable gifting rules puts nobody involved in a very good light.

Trackers

Our approach with Index trackers has been to use them when no alternative exists. As you know, we have recently replaced our All Share tracker with a core equity fund which will deliver large growth share results without the large company bias that tracker funds necessarily suffer from. Even so, we have been pleased with the performance of the tracker fund from Legal and General which we recommended initially and which has done well when measured against the Index and its peers. We noted with some interest an article in the Sunday Telegraph of 29th October headlined "Virgin Is Off-Track", which was not about their train service! The article pointed out that 95,000 investors continue to hold this fund even though it has underperformed the Index by 30 percentage points over the past 10 years!

The unsurprising reason for this underperformance is that Virgin charges between two and four times as much as other funds for providing the tracker. Just another demonstration of how important charges are and why we spend so much time endeavouring to get those charges reduced for our clients.

This months book recommendation is "The Rules of Life" by Richard Templar.

The book is a very easy read and is a combination of self-help, common sense and many of the things your mother told you as you were growing up. What we have found is that as life goes on we sometimes forget those little nuggets that make life easier for ourselves and everybody else in our lives; this book is a handy reminder of things like "If you cannot say anything nice, do not say anything at all", "It does not hurt to forgive" and, our personal favourite, "Have a
plan".

There is nothing new in the book and nothing you will not already know but we found ourselves nodding along and promising ourselves we would remember and apply more of what we read.

The book is readily available at bookstores and Amazon, but if you have any difficulty finding it please contact jayne@indexfundadvisors.co.uk.

We are all, quite rightly, more conscious of the fact that our very identity can be stolen by thieves and used to run up debts we are unaware of. There has been a great deal of publicity recently about the banks in particular who appear to be putting confidential papers into bin bags and leaving them outside their premises where anybody could pick them up.

In order to reassure clients, we are taking this opportunity to advise you of our procedure to safeguard your confidential information.

All waste paper - not just that which is deemed confidential - is consigned to locked metal bins on our premises provided by a company called "Shred It", whose vehicles (they look like security vans) you may have noticed.

Representatives of the company call to our premises once a month and shred all of the paper on site, in the presence of a staff member. The shredded paper is then transported securely to a company called “KAPPA” which then recycles the paper. After every visit we receive a certificate of destruction from Shred It.

If we are required to hold client documents overnight as does occasionally happen they are stored either in the metal safe we have on the premises or in the fireproof filing room.

We hope this will give you an indication of how seriously we take the disposal of confidential waste and can reassure you that we will continue to take all necessary measures to protect your personal information.

"The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life."

Henry Ford