Octopus speaks on the Benefits of AIM and its Increasingly Strong Market Performance
The Aim market (formerly the Alternative Investment Market) has traditionally been seen as a bit of a backwater. It was launched in 1995 in attempt to give smaller companies that were poorly served by the main market of the London Stock Exchange a chance to raise capital by going public. However, up until recently, it’s proved to be a bit of a dud, notorious for being the haven for illiquid, sometimes dodgy, companies. For example, if you put £1,000 into the FTSE All-share index it would now be worth £5,003, while the same sum invested in Aim would only have grown to £1,390 – less than a third of that amount.
However, over the last few years, Aim shares have actually outperformed the main market. Has Aim finally “grown up”, or is it just a sign that the small-cap growth stock bubble is reaching bursting point? We decided to talk to two experts from Octopus, a fund management company that focuses on Aim shares (and other similar areas of investing such as venture capital trusts (VCTs) and the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS)).
