If you were tasked to pick an industry that has delivered market beating returns over the past few decades I’d wager that railroads wouldn’t necessarily be high up on your list. In fact, when you judge it by what I’d call its economic performance, there’s every reason to assume the railroad industry would have been a disaster zone for long…

Once described by a senior US regulator as little more than a casino the Alternative Investment Market (AIM for short) wouldn’t ordinarily be your starting point when searching for high quality UK-listed companies. Interested in an all or nothing punt on a firm prospecting for gold in sub-Saharan Africa? If so then AIM is your place. Looking for a boring…

It’s fair to say that the last eighteen months has been a period to forget for BT Group (LON: BT.A) shareholders. Back in November 2015 the shares were trading at just under £5 each having gone on a tremendous six year run from their 80 pence lows during the financial crisis. Profits were growing, and the company looked fresh having embraced the…

Retail stocks like Marks & Spencer (LON: MKS) can often be very difficult ones for long term investors because they operate in fiercely competitive environments in which previously established advantages can rapidly erode. The most obvious recent example of this is with Tesco. It wasn’t so long ago that the supermarket giant was well on its way to racking up…

In general the pub industry is a pretty tough one to be in for long-term investors. Not only are many of the pub companies totally hobbled by the silly levels of debt they took on before the 2007 financial crisis, but the industry itself is facing secular headwinds as fewer people are drinking in pubs these days. All-in-all its a tough place…

On a purely qualitative basis there’s a couple of reasons why you might consider a long-term investment in supermarket giant Sainsbury’s (LON: SBRY). The first is that with around 150 years on the clock it undoubtedly has a long history of continuous trading. When you consider that well over forty of those years have been as a publicly traded company – Sainsbury’s shares first floated…