A tale of foolishness: what not to do with £150,000 – saltydog investor

Douglas Chadwick,
founder of Saltydog Investor

In the mid-1970s I set up my own flat-pack furniture manufacturing business. Ten years later, in 1985, I successfully sold it.

Using some of the proceeds of the sale I invested in two investment bonds, together worth £150,000. This was a not-inconsiderable sum, equivalent to around £450,000 in today’s money.

I purchased these two bonds via an Independent Financial Advisor (IFA), as the investment company concerned did not deal directly with the public.

Like so many people I had been sold the illusion that financial advisors actually advise, that wealth managers actually manage, and that the financial

industry has individual investor’s interests at heart. This was foolish of me.

Unfortunately, or perhaps stupidly, I only began taking an active interest in the performance of these two bonds 15 years later. It is no excuse, but I had been busy building another manufacturing business.

When I eventually did look, I had two unpleasant surprises. First, there had been very little capital growth. And second, I was astounded to discover that my money was still in the same market sectors as at the outset. No-one had been managing it at all. It had just been sitting there, forgotten, throughout the 15 years, regardless of the dramatic changes occurring in the investment landscape.

Enough is enough, I thought. It’s time to take control of this myself.

And thus began the road that led to the Saltydog trend investing system, and to me now explaining it to you.

I’ll come back to that journey and what I discovered in a moment. But first, a bit of background.

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