Week 1: Why and how should we invest for the future?

Introduction

Welcome to Week 1 of Managing my investments. Martin Upton of the Centre for the Public Understanding of Finance at the Open University Business School, presents a summary of the subjects and issues that will be explored during the next six weeks. Martin is a specialist in personal and corporate finance, and will guide you through this free course.

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Transcript

MARTIN UPTON

Hello everyone, I’m Martin Upton of the Open University’s True Potential Centre. Welcome to the first week of Managing My Investments – the course that aims to help you align your investment strategy with your future financial needs.

We start the week by examining the importance of savings and investments for individuals and the economy as a whole. We then take stock of how well we fare in the UK when undertaking investments.

The overall picture presents issues of concern. Arguably we don’t do particularly well, both in terms of how much we save and the range of investments we employ. We’ll try to decipher why this is the case. We’ll then start to assemble the building blocks of an investment strategy by looking at the principles and plans that should underpin investment management. These include understanding your risk appetite and your time horizon for investment planning.

We also start to get to grips with two of the central determinants of investment returns interest rates and share prices. We look at recent trends in these in the UK and the drivers of these trends. It’s all part of the process of starting to build your confidence in understanding what influences the returns you can get for different types of investments.

So, at the end of the first week you should understand the investment record in the UK, the first fundamentals of devising an investment strategy and the features of two major determinants of investment returns. So let’s get going with Week One!

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In this first week you will explore:

• the current features and recent record of personal investment activity
• the first building blocks for constructing an investment strategy
• the factors that determine the levels of interest rates – one key determinant of investment returns
• the driving forces of movements in share prices – another key determinant of investment returns.

In examining these subjects, you look closely at recent trends in interest rates and share prices and the specific factors that have recently impacted on their levels.

At the end of the week you will have an understanding of personal investment behaviour and two of the most important determinants of returns you get from investing.

Throughout the course you will see some terms in bold. You can find definitions for these terms in the course glossary [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .

The production of this course was made possible by the financial help of True Potential LLP, who donated £1.4 million to enable The Open University to develop a free personal finance education programme for the public.

Before you start, The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations of the course. Your input will help to further improve the online learning experience. If you’d like to help, and if you haven't done so already, please fill in this optional survey.