Good morning and welcome to your Morning Briefing for Monday 11 August 2025. To get this in your inbox every morning click here.
Syz Capital reopens BTC Alpha Fund amid surging institutional demand
Syz Capital is set to reopen its Bitcoin-denominated fund of crypto hedge funds, the BTC Alpha Fund, to new and existing investors from 1 October 2025 in response to growing institutional demand.
The fund which was launched in March 2025 was “swiftly” closed after just one month to external capital, following overwhelming investor demand.
Yasmina Siadatan: A new era of trust in financial advice
No one could have been happier than I was to see headlines on the BBC about the government’s plans to open up access to good financial decision making, writes Dynamic Planner chief revenue officer Yasmina Siadatan.
Those of us in the industry have been aware for some years of the planned push to get more people investing – both under the Conservatives and under this government. But it’s out there in the world now, and there’s nowhere to go but forwards.
What that means is more people getting the help they need to achieve better outcomes with their money, at a cost relative to what they can afford to pay. And the slashing away of the red tape that’s stopped the industry providing that help for many years.
Quote Of The Day
We’ve spent the last few years squirrelling away savings, which is why almost two thirds of people have built a decent emergency savings safety net to support them if life takes a turn for the unexpected
– Hargreaves Lansdown head of personal finance Sarah Coles on the results from the latest HL Savings & Resilience Barometer
Stat Attack
Research from from trading and investing platform eToro has found retail investors capitalise on market volatility and buy the dip.
62%
of retail investors buy the dip during market declines.
5%
buy during any notable decline, 21% when the market falls 5-10%, 24% when it drops 11-20%, and 12% when it plunges over 20%.
55%
of investors are influenced by news headlines.
25%
said that news makes them feel anxious and worry about the impact on their investments.
14%
reported feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information.
Source: eToro
In Other News
Castlefield, the employee-owned ethical investment specialist, has launched the TM Castlefield Thoughtful World Equity Fund.
The TM Castlefield Thoughtful World Equity Fund will be co-managed by Fund Manager, James Buckley and Castlefield head of investment management Mark Elliott.
The new Fund is formed from a combination of the CFP Castlefield Thoughtful UK Opportunities Fund and the CFP Castlefield Thoughtful European Fund, managed by Elliott and Buckley respectively.
The TM Castlefield Thoughtful World Equity Fund will have a high-conviction portfolio of 40 to 50 large-cap global leaders, selected using Castlefield’s Thoughtful Investor approach.
Nvidia and AMD to pay 15% of China chip sale revenues to US government (Financial Times)
Shares edge higher in Asia, Nikkei futures near record top (Reuters)
Reeves’ tax hikes speed cooldown in UK wage growth, survey finds (Bloomberg)
Did You See?
Simpler pension transfers took an average of 10.8 days to complete between July 2024 and June 2025, down from 11 days at the end of March.
This is according to the latest Origo Transfer Index (OTI) data, which cover 30 of the UK’s largest pension providers.
Simple transfers, where firms have greater control over straightforward pension asset movements, made up nearly 90% of all transactions, with more than half completed in six working days or less.
Overall, the OTI group processed 1.4m transfers over the 12-month period, worth just under £58bn.
Across all transfers, including more complex cases requiring additional checks, the average completion time was 12.4 days.
