Cold Hard Cash (Money Week)

Member Name: EasternStar

Product:	Money Week
Date:	20/12/08 (218 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Razor-sharp financial weekly - entertaining, engaging and smart.

Disadvantages: Lean and mean!

I signed up to MoneyWeek in the summer and have never looked back. This financial weekly hooked me in with its tagline "How to Make It, How to Keep It, How to Spend It". Who can refuse an offer like that? My inner capitalist could not resist.

MoneyWeek's irreverent, contrarian take on the financial markets is always entertaining, even if I don't agree with every word. The editor-in-chief, Sunday Times financial columnist Merryn Somerset Webb, is a fearless and engaging financial commentator who usually offers a lucid perspective on events.

MoneyWeek was spot-on in predicting the current UK recession and property crash as early as 2007, even while politicians and newspapers were still blathering on about a temporary blip, or "soft landing". However I think the huge decline in oil and commodity prices took the magazine by surprise after July 2008, as it was still giving extensive coverage to these asset classes right up until the moment the bubble burst.

I imagine the target audience is a reasonably sophisticated and moderately affluent investor looking for up-to-date financial views that differ from the media herd. The magazine deserves a wider readership though. I'm no investor, but I do enjoy the commentary, the insight and the analysis within.

MoneyWeek certainly doesn't dumb down financial concepts. Whereas the mainstream press (even the wonderful BBC) tend to gloss over the complexities of ABS, CDS, CDOs, CLOs and the general alphabet soup of financial market lingo, in Money Week you are more likely to see ideas clearly explained. For example, this week I learned about Tobin's Q which is (wait for it guys) a way to spot undervalued shares by comparing a company's stock market capitalisation to the book value of its assets.

The publication itself is concise, readable, full-colour, with plenty of charts, sidebars and the occasional photo. Don't expect an "Economist"-style tome - MoneyWeek is usually a thin 43 pages and the cover paper always looks a bit cheap to me. I am also not keen on the bundles of advertising leaflets that come with the magazine, often advertising courses on alleged "investment secrets" at steep prices. The magazine cover usually features an inoffensive cartoon and the tagline. As an individual magazine, it retails for £2.50 but you can subscribe for £14 a quarter.

The format opens with the editor's letter, usually a wail of doom and gloom bemoaning the imminent slump and meltdown of civilisation as we know it brought on by unsustainable bubbles, profligate governments, greedy banks, reckless borrowers etc, etc. (OK I exaggerate for effect, but you get the picture). The news pages give a concise summary of the week's news and the markets cover all kinds of odd stories which would not normally see the light of day outside the Companies & Markets section of the FT. For example, this week (19 Dec 2008), I learned about the Ecuador bond defaults and the surprising weakness of the Swiss Franc. There's also the obligatory chart showing the top risers and fallers amongst UK shares.

MoneyWeek is at pains to point out it doesn't offer investment advice and it does tend to avoid the intensive share-tipping approach of, say "Investors Chronicle". Instead it takes a position on asset classes and macro-trends e.g. the future direction of house prices, or gold prices. That said, experts are drafted in to give their share picks. My favourite section is the "Entrepreneurs" feature - this week we read about the founder of Subway who went from student poverty in 1966 to billionaire sandwich king 42 years later. At a time when the excesses of capitalism are (rightly) getting a lot of criticism, it's good to read about genuine success like that.

After a politics and economics round-up, there's a cover story. Sometimes this grabs my attention and sometimes I just skim read it. This week it's on the scintillating topic of forestry investment. The personal finance pages that follow are probably the most useful, with headlines such as "How to find Christmas bargains". Another highlight is the "Best blogs" section which draws a range of smart and controversial opinions from the blogosphere.

The "spending section" is always fun (from a totally voyeuristic point of view, as multimillion pound mansions tend to be profiled). Matthew Jukes always provides a lucid and entertaining wine review, although I would have to write 240 Dooyoo reviews of my own to afford the £120 pink champagne he features in this week's column.

Finally Bill Bonner closes the magazine with his "Last word" column. He is a fantastic columnist since he brings real historical perspective and a razor-sharp wit. Here's an example as he reflects on the recent credit crunch implosion and its effect on the so-called masters of the universe: "In just six months, [capitalism] has scratched 10,000 Porsches, destroyed more monuments than Cromwell, and squeezed the rich harder than Mitterand. It would have taken an army of dreary Bolsheviks decades to redistribute so much wealth; and it wouldn't be half as much fun".

In summary then, MoneyWeek is an engaging, intelligent financial weekly that is not afraid to march to the sound of a different drummer. My weekend wouldn't be the same without it.

(c) EasternStar 2008. Also on Dooyoo as Westcoean

Summary: Financial weekly that marches to the sound of a different drummer