Nicolas Darvas was a professional dancer in 50's. He danced all round world. However his real love was in stocks and shares. He started "dabbling" and had some winners, had some losers. He soon found that he had more losers than winners! After a while he started to analyse his stocks and work out where he was going wrong. He realised that his main problem was that he was buying stocks on impulse or on recommendation by his broker. He was trying to guess market instead of react to what market was actually doing (in fact, he was not alone in this - 90% of people today do same and lose). Realising this mistake was start of his fortune.

He developed a way of picking only a few stocks at a time and analysing their price charts. He found that stocks move in definable cycles, and such movements could be represented by a box. He called these boxes "Darvas boxes". When boxes "...stacked up upon each other...in an upwards fashion..." he bought. The boxes gave indicators on when to buy and sell. He limited downside using stop loss orders to automatically sell. He turned an emotional investing loss into a systemised investing gain!

Many people are oblivious to fact that they could be sitting on top of a potentially explosive, ticking tax bomb that is continually being fuelled by rising house prices. The tax in question is Inheritance Tax (IHT), a non-discriminating tax that doesn't target only super-rich.

Let's consider whether you have a potential problem.

The IHT threshold means that tax on assets valued up to this amount is payable at a ‘nil' rate. This includes your property as well as your savings, investments, insurance policies not written under trust and business assets (subject to availability of relief at 50% or 100%). The value of your estate above this threshold could be subject to a tax of 40 per cent, depending on who inherits your estate following your death.

Protecting your assets from Taxman

If you haven't done so already, first place to start is to write a will. This will ensure that your assets are distributed as you want them to be when you die. Provisions to mitigate IHT can also be included.

Assets transferred between spouses are exempt from IHT, but other lifetime gifts could also be made in a more tax-efficient way.