Author: David

Described as “the Martin Lewis of investing”, David has 25 years of experience reporting on and, then, working in the finance industry. In his first 15 years in the industry, David was a financial publisher, editor and financial reporter. His work had him spend two-and-a-half years in Hong Kong. During this 15-year period, he also launched a series of corporate financial publications and made contributions to both national newspapers and radio. One of these publications predicted the financial crisis of 2007-09, the pensions deficit and the rating agencies debacle; happy days. These predictions led to David appearing on the Stephen Nolan show on BBC Radio 5 Live in 2005, during which he warned of the forthcoming financial crisis. This was dismissed by the other panelists on the show as “trying to talk down jobs” and something that those panelists claimed would not happen. The other panelists were “experts”. For the following 10 years, David worked as an Investment Writer within the investment industry. This involved writing and presenting investment-performance reports, explanatory articles and forward-looking pieces while working, one-after-another, for four of the world’s largest financial institutions. David received very high internal ratings – the internal bun-fight that determines how much of a bonus staff in financial institutions receive. Unfortunately for him, his roles were never sufficiently important to warrant a six-figure salary; those were the preserve of analysts, fund managers, investment officers and people who had attended the “right” schools or knew the “right” people – two things that David can never be accused of. Nevertheless, David did receive generous contributions to his company pension. Unfortunately, these respective company pensions all charged high fees and delivered poor performance. Seeing this, he took control of his investments and, over a period of 10 years, delivered performance for himself of between 5% and 55% each year. He did this by researching lots of companies and investing in selected ones. This demanded endless reading, analysing and researching. It also cost a few thousand quid each year in research and analysis tools. This was lucrative but high-risk, very time-consuming and, ultimately, a conversation killer at social functions. As a result, David started thinking about ways in which he could invest by emulating the risk-rated funds that big companies offer, but for MUCH lower fees. Meanwhile, back in his job, despite his best efforts, David’s sense of humour did not get him fired. This left him with no choice but to resign in order to write this book. By lifting the lid on what he and many others consider to be a rip-off, this book is very likely to put an end to anyone in the investment industry ever wanting to hire him again. In the meantime, he can often be found standing and grinning inanely next to random windows.