The Money? What Money? Investment group has, after many months of careful deliberation, countless hours spent on fact finding trips, report analysis and director interviews and what must total several weeks in the pub, purchased a whole load of shares. Our full portfolio can be seen on the left and detailed reasoning will appear in the minutes which will/might eventually be put online so click read more below for the highlights. 

The most controversial purchase (I hadto buy Nik a pint to convince him) was our banking index. We've putan equal amount of money into the UK's top 5 banks:

• Barclays

• Halifax Bank of Scotland

• HSBC

• Royal Bank of Scotland

• Lloyds. 

The rationale is that the banking sector took its much publicised pounding over fears of insolvency which we now, thanks to our friends in Westminster, need worry about no more. Despite much of the risk having gone, institutional investors can't be seen to be touching “the financial sector” dueto its current stigma and those who buy now and wait for confidence to be regained stand to make some pretty good returns.

On the other side of the coin we likeTesco's plans to move into retail banking, people trust the Tesco brand which puts them in an excellent position to take advantage ofthe current mistrust of high street banks.

Next came the tricky subject of Qonnectis. Suffice to say the phrase “in it to the death” was used on several occasions. That said I've still got faith in these guys, we always said that it was all or nothing and with more and more focus on both green issues and economising they have the same potential they had when we bought them. On that basis we more than doubled our holding in them, for an entertainingly small amount ofmoney compared to what we originally paid.

We also bought into ITM Power, a company focussed on making hydrogen a practical energy source for thehome whom I wrote about in July.