Our content this month are as follows:-

• Index In the News
• A Great Night Out and The Opportunity To Support Macmillan
• Books We Have Read
• From The Press
• Quote of the Month

Since winning the National New Model Adviser of the Year Award, we have enjoyed a great deal of press coverage. Last Friday, the 21st of April, Les and Noel were invited on to the BBC to discuss the award and answer questions from listeners. The show was the local BBC flagship consumer programme, hosted by Ed Doolan and Les and Noel featured for one hour.

There were a large number of wide-ranging questions from members of the public and the feedback we have had has been very positive. Indeed a large number of people could not put their questions in the time available and we received numerous enquiries by telephone at the office after the show. The "Beeb” (as we feel we can call it now) were very pleased with the response and we are very hopeful that they may repeat the experience.


Whilst we feature fairly regularly in the press now, we were especially pleased with the attached article from Les, which appeared in the Wealth Supplement of the Birmingham Post. Again, we have had a great deal of positive feedback about the article and we are attaching it so that anyone who missed it can catch up.
As if all this were not enough excitement, Les has been invited to meet Princess Anne, the Princess Royal on two occasions in May. We will have a full report next month.

Rob Elliott, Regional Director for the Macdonald Burlington hotel in Birmingham has kindly provided us with a voucher for dinner in their excellent Berlioz restaurant, together with bed-and-breakfast for two people. Those of you who know the Burlington will know that it is a first-class hotel in central Birmingham near to the Bullring shopping centre, the Mailbox, the fleshpots of Broad Street and beautiful walks around Birmingham's rejuvenated canal systems.

Rob has provided the voucher in support of Macmillan Cancer Relief and we are therefore auctioning the voucher (which is worth at least £300) and so please telephone or e-mail your bids as soon as possible. Macmillan is a great cause so please be generous.

Another economics book this month, and this one is fantastically well written, is "The Undercover Economist" by Tim Harford. With chapters ranging from "Who Pays for Your Coffee?" to "The Men Who Knew the Value of Nothing" the book will have you looking at everyday situations in a completely different way.

Those of you who read the Undercover Economist column in the Financial Times will appreciate Harford's engaging style and we can promise you an absorbing read.

The book is available from Amazon.co.uk and if you have any trouble obtaining it please contact jayne@indexfundadvisors.co.uk.

One or two articles have caught our eye recently and we thought we would share these nuggets with you. First, the headline in Investment Week recently was "Outperformance of UK All Companies is appalling display of mediocrity." The article went on to explain that the average UK All Companies fund underperformed both the FTSE 100 and FTSE All Share during 2005, no surprise to us or to you we are sure! The article criticised companies for increasing fees during this period of underperformance and made the comment that investors would be "better off investing in a tracker."

The Sunday Times of 9th April 2006, reported on the Standard Life flotation. They pointed out that Standard made losses during 2004 but had returned to the black in 2005. The piece that caught our eye was that they expected profits to show a "continuing positive trajectory" and were laying out a growth strategy to show how the group are moving to "higher margin products." So, it has not taken long to shake off the mutual ethos and to join the rest of their insurance company friends in promoting high cost products to the public.

It was just these sorts of products that William Kay commented on in the Sunday Times of 23rd April 2006, when he referred to structured investments in scathing terms highlighting the "fat, hidden fees to set up complicated futures and options contracts." Coincidentally, Noel has written an article which will soon appear in Investment Adviser, a Financial Times publication, on this very subject. We will let you have a copy when available.

"A dream is just a dream. A goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline."

Harvey Mackay
Author of Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive