Gilt-edged securities

Chapters 3 and 4 are devoted to a type of security often ignored in investment text books — fixed interest securities.1 Such a lack of emphasis on this type of investment can partly be explained by the preference for the more glamorous company share sector and partly by the poor performance of fixed interest securities in this century. (For example, £100 spent on 21/2% Consols at the beginning of 1919 would have been quoted at £2511/16% on the first day of 1992 and worth in real terms only 11/2% of its 1919 value.)