The need for up to date information

Posted on 18 February 2013 by Douglas Chadwick

On Saturday 9th Feb the Telegraph reported on the front page of the "Your Money" section that the worst performing unit trust over the last five years was" Legg Mason Japan equity." Now I assume that this has been printed in order to educate and inform its readers. This in order that they might make a better decision when choosing  where to invest. Otherwise why print it at all. How typical and how useless. In fact worse than useless because it is misleading and does not tell you what happened in recent years. The truth is that "Legg Mason Japan equity" over the last three years, the last two years and the last year has either been the top performing unit trust or close to the top performing unit trust. In this year of RDR there is the potential for many more investors to choose to go down the route of becoming DIY investors with their ISAs and SIPPs. For how long will they be treated to this cheap easy misinformation? When will the financial industry treat these people as adults and supply them with up to date regular unbiased accurate performance numbers? Only then will the playing field be level,  and perhaps the returns on ISAs and SIPPs will move forward and give people a better level of retirement.