Our content this month are as follows:-

• News
• The Press
• Books We Have Read
• Turn Prospects into Clients
• Quote of the Month

Index Grand Prix

Our annual Go Karting day took place at Priory Park, Tamworth on the 8th September this year and, as usual, a great deal of fun was had by all. There was a significantly bigger turnout and some controversy over the final which meant that we ran over our allotted time and finished a little later than usual. We can report briefly that the individual event was won by Kevin Harris-James of Irwin Mitchell, the consensus being that he drove a little less aggressively than his wife when she won last year - but it was close!

We will have a full report with photographs in next month's edition.

Abbey Wrap

We recently attended a presentation by Abbey (owned by Banco Santander, the ninth largest bank in the world) who unveiled a number of exciting improvements that they are making to the Wrap service. From 30th October 2006, they will be re-branding as James Hay Wrap, capitalising on the excellent reputation that James Hay have as an administrator within the investment community.

Among the improvements is that clients who utilise the service will have access to their portfolios from 30th October 2006. There are many more to come and as Abbey roll them out we will keep you advised; in addition Abbey will be writing to all clients on the Wrap platform. This new initiative coincides with an increase in charges, but happily all of our existing clients will retain the current charging structure for existing money and any future monies introduced.

It is interesting to note that more and more Wrap platforms are being developed and more and more advisors are beginning to use them; having seen sophisticated Wrap platforms in action in the US and Australia, we are proud of having been in the vanguard of the introduction of Wraps and welcome these improvements by Abbey. Wraps offer clear transparent charging structures, and when combined with open architecture and Abbey's free dealing service, result in huge benefits to you, our clients, particularly when compared with the old regime of policy charges, spreads, dealing fees and exit charges.

Lots of interesting stuff in the press this month and rather than attach the articles we can give you a flavour with a few quotes:

The Independent on Sunday 21st September 2006, in an article about UK equity funds pointed out that threequarters of managers in the UK All Companies Sector failed to outperform the FTSE all share index over the past three years (our italics). Unfortunately, this data was being used to promote fund of funds or multi manager offerings. These vehicles claim to be able to spot the top managers in advance and build your portfolio only with those top managers. If only! Given that active fund managers cannot pick individual shares and that there are more managers than individual shares quite how they pull off this trick is not fully revealed. What is revealed however is that the charges are huge, as you have to pay the manager of managers as well as the underlying fund manager. These funds are utilised extensively by ignorant and lazy advisors and should be avoided by a very wide margin.

There was another illuminating article by Ian Cowie in the Telegraph this month in which he used the example of his own forecasting to try to time the market; he had attempted to take profits from his portfolio in April but missed the boat when the market began to fall and so waited for it to recover! Needless to say, the kind of systemised rebalancing we undertake eliminates the illusion that markets may be timed and we have sent him some information to save him future heartache!
Finally, there was a great deal of press comment about the new boy at Fidelity and his intentions for the new Fidelity Global Special Situations Fund, which has been hived off from Anthony Bolton's Fidelity Special Situations Fund ; you will recall that we wrote an article about this fund for one of the Financial Times magazines. It seems that the new manager Jorma Korhonen has decided that he will do things his way, much to the horror of these commentators who believed he might be another Anthony Bolton. Suffice it to say that if Fidelity thought they could replicate Anthony Bolton they would do it a hundred times over, as we have said before he is famous because he is so rare. Even so, the volatility of this fund means that Fidelity have not produced one investor who has stayed the whole course with Anthony Bolton (if they had one they would definitely do so)!

This months book recommendation is the magazine, "The Week". This is a subscription only magazine which covers all the serious papers from the UK and around the world over the previous week, landing on your doorstep on a Friday morning.

You will find the best of coverage on the main stories of the week, including politics, world events, best articles and columnists from Britain, America and the rest of the world. There are sections on health and science, sport, arts and property. To cap it all, you will also find the best of obituaries, letters and commentary from the broadsheets and very few advertisements.

Subscribing to this magazine is like getting four of five newspapers each day and allowing somebody else to do the hard work of finding the best bits, we would recommend it to you.

You can subscribe by telephoning 0845 129 7060 or visit www.theweek.co.uk.

Louise Panayides of Edge Creative is back this month to tell us about another service she offers. Edge operates a division called "Prospects into Clients" with a startling proposition. It is that if you give them a list of 100 prospective clients they will guarantee to get your sales appointment with at least 10 of them; if they do not they will carry on working for you free of charge until they do. As with everything Louise does, this is a very straightforward offer and we are attaching her brochure which contains contact details, or contact us and we can put you in touch with her.

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." Benjamin Franklin