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Tony Margaritelli and the £100,000 Balanced portfolio

2nd Jul 2015
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Roddy Kohn expalins how being an ICPA member can be good for your wealth.

Reading the headline on this article, anyone who knows Tony Margaritelli, top man at the ICPA, would have to admit their imagination would have started to run riot. After all, he wouldn’t look out of place in a Scorsese movie involving a family from Sicily, a horde of cash and a suitcase, would he? But it’s ok readers – this isn’t one of those stories.

The story of the £100,000 Balanced Portfolio is a more normal affair. In fact, it goes to show how Mr Margaritelli, in his attempt to help ICPA members grow their businesses, control their costs and improve their finances, has set out to achieve much of what he had hoped the ICPA would be all about. Some five years ago, Tony highlighted at one of those memorable annual meetings how it might be a good idea for members to consider the Money Observer Magazine balanced portfolio. Of course, he had an inside line to its managers, KohnCougar. I have to immediately declare a vested interest here. I am the Kohn of KohnCougar, and now a regular columnist for this very magazine. But that shouldn’t divert you from under-standing how well Tony’s recommendation would have served you. The Money Observer magazine publicly lists the performance of this portfolio, made up of a mixture of funds, investment trusts, shares and exchange traded funds across different asset classes. A portfolio review and outlook appears every three months. So how did it do? How would you have fared if you had listened to Tony back then? Well, the fund is run in such a way that the Money Observer magazine likes to reset the portfolio back to zero every five years or so. Consequently, we have to say the previous incarnation of this portfolio returned close to 90% (after charges) from its inception on 17 March 2009. The good news is the fund was relaunched with a new £100,000  investment amount on 14 March 2014 . So how is that new fund doing? I am delighted to say if you had invested in that fund you would have made £16,801 as at 12 May this year. Of course, Tony could not have possibly known for sure that we would “keep on keeping on” when it came to delivering such investment returns. Nor are we, as investment managers, restricted to the idiosyncrasies of what cash a client has stored away, or what liabilities they may have such as mortgages. Nor do we have to think about a client’s age or their tax position, pre disclosed investment goals or how and whether they understood ‘risk’. All of these things are imposed upon investors and their advisors by the regulators where a customer has sought advice from a firm. And all have to be paid for! The beauty of the Money Observer KohnCougar Portfolio is that we just get on with what we have been doing for 30+ years – investing money! So that cool 15.5% return would have made a handsome dent in any reader’s ICPA annual fee. All of which goes to show perhaps it really does pay to belong to the ICPA!

• Roddy Kohn is managing partner at KohnCougar. Email [email protected]

• Roddy Kohn will be presenting at the 2015 ICPA Conference on 24 September in Daventry. For details and to book your place call us on 0800 074 2896 or email [email protected]

This article is taken from “Accounting Practice” the ICPA quarterly magazine. Dedicated to supporting and promoting the needs of the general practitioner. You can find us at www.icpa.org.uk  or email [email protected]  or by phone on 0800-074-2896

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