The Investment trust sector has changed a lot over the past 20 years, as traditional buyers in wealth management firms retreat and a new generation of more sophisticated DIY investors look to exploit the advantages of closed-end funds. In the latest Money Makers podcast, Nick Greenwood, manager of Miton Global Opportunities, a specialist investment trust fund, discusses these changes with Money Makers editor Jonathan Davis and highlights the themes and special situations that have been driving his trust’s own strong recent performance.

While the UK and French elections are grabbing all the market and media attention, the most important issue most investors face is to get their medium- and long-term asset allocation right – which means getting the right side of the underlying cycles that drive market behaviour beyond the noise and excitement of immediate political events. Few market analysts are as well placed to make those judgments as Robin Griffiths, the Head of Multi-Asset Research at ECU, who has been analysing the ups and downs of financial market cycles in the City for no fewer than five decades. In this wide-ranging podcast, the latest in the Money Makers series, editor Jonathan Davis asked him for his views on how each of the major asset classes are likely to develop from here, starting with the bond market – the key to everything else.

Theresa May’s decision to call a snap election on June 8th took Westminster and the financial markets by surprise. What does it mean for the Brexit negotiations and investors? That was the question I discuss this week with three leading market commentators in a special edition of the Money Makers weekly podcast. The three expert voices you will hear are those of Mark Dampier, Head of Research at Hargreaves Lansdown, the UK’s largest online broker, Charles Morris, editor of the Fleet Street Letter, and Tim Price, the founder of Price Value Partners, and a regular commentator in Money Week and other publications.

In this week’s Money Makers podcast Jonathan Davis spends 40 minutes talking to the market strategist Eoin Treacy about his latest views on equity markets, bonds, currencies and the outlook for inflation.

Are there good opportunities in the investment trust sector at the moment – and if so where? After such a strong run have the world’s equity markets risen too far too fast? Jonathan Davis puts these questions to Richard Curling, who runs a fund of investment trusts for Jupiter Asset Management, as part of a wide-ranging discussion about the markets and the closed end fund sector in the latest Money Makers podcast. Often known as the City’s best kept secret, the best investment trusts consistently outperform their open-ended equivalents, but you have to know how and where to look for them.

Resource stocks made a strong recovery in 2016 after a torrid bear market, with both oil and mining companies heading the index performance tables. Few professional investors were more exposed to this rollercoaster ride than Angelos Damaskos, the manager of two specialist small cap commodity funds widely followed by private investors, Junior Oil and Junior Gold. In the latest Money Makers podcast he gives his views on the two sectors now – where he thinks commodity prices are heading and how he is positioning his funds for that environment.

In the latest Money Makers podcast we catch up again with Chris Hutchinson, lead fund manager at Unicorn Asset Management, the boutique small cap and AIM fund management firm that boasts one of the best long-term records in its universe. How has the fund coped with the fallout from Brexit and Trump’s election? What are the prospects for future returns? And why despite strong demand has the firm capped new applications to its market-leading AIM venture capital trust at just 10% of assets?

The Trump rally has taken the world’s equity markets to new highs in many countries, and together with the fall in the value of the pound, has made the past year among the best 12-month periods for investors in living memory. What next? Can the good times keep rolling? In the latest Money Makers podcast I sit down with Mark Dampier, Head of Research at Hargreaves Lansdown, the number one platform for private investors in the UK, to discuss the market outlook and where the best opportunities and greatest risks lie now (30 minutes)

An interview with Gervais Williams, Managing Director of Miton Group plc and author of new book The Retreat of Globalisation

Fund manager Chris Rice expects a downturn as unemployment and interest rates turn - discover why in this interview with Money Maker's editor Jonathan Davis.