Self Trading are delighted to offer you the opportunity to get in on an investment phenomenon that is massive in the United States and with the institutional investment sector.

It's called Tropical Hardwood Investing and it's a low risk, high return ethical investment strategy which is both profitable and carbon friendly.

We in the UK have (as usual) been slow to catch on, as the investment is geographically a long way from home and until now no UK Brokerage firm has offered the private UK investor the opportunity to invest in this field.

Self Tradings client are the first UK brokerage who have tailored this investment to meet the specific requirements of the small to medium private UK investor.

We at Self Trading will be happy to discuss this opportunity in more detail with you.

This is a non-regulated investment and there are brokerage and agency opportunities for good networkers.

Please read this short introduction to Tropical Hardwood Investing and feel free to contact the Self Trading team to receive you free copy of ’The Tropical Hardwood Investment Guide'

Not for nothing has hardwood been described as the near perfect investment. Quite literally you can watch your money grow.

Tropical hardwood has outperformed almost every other commodity consistently for the past hundred years. It has done so for one simple reason. Trees grow. Other assets may well appreciate in value due to inflation and other market forces but the VOLUME of the asset you hold remains constant.

The investment works as follows.
Let’s say you own 1 troy ounce of gold and you buy it at £250 per troy ounce. 10 years later it is worth £331 per troy ounce. You have seen the VALUE of your gold appreciate by £81 due to inflation etc but you are still holding the same VOLUME of gold as you were ten years ago. Now imagine that your troy ounce had grown into 10 troy ounces over that same 10 year period. Your investment is now worth £3310 because gold would be worth more per troy ounce AND you now hold more troy ounces.

That is EXACTLY what happens with hardwood. Trees are planted and they grow.

The VALUE of your investment increases year on year as both the price of your hardwood AND the VOLUME of your hardwood increase.

Another simple analogy is you buy a 1 bedroom flat for £100,000. 10 years later a one bedroom flat is worth £220,000. Now imagine your one bedroom flat had grown into a 3 room house over the same period.

You would have a more valuable asset AND more of it.

Tropical hardwood investment works as follows. You buy 200 teak saplings. These are planted in a nursery until they are 6 weeks old when they are transferred to your land (which you are issued a 25 year non-rescindable lease). By the end of year one these trees are 8 foot tall and 2-4 inches in diameter. By the 5th year the trees are now 18 foot high and much thicker.

It is important to realise that you have bought an investment with TWO separate VALUE'S.

Firstly there is the value of the TIMBER as a COMMODITY at any given stage of the investment.

Secondly there is the value of the investment as a whole, as an APPRECIATING ASSET.

By year 5 the value of your investment as TIMBER (i.e. if you were to harvest the trees and sell them as timber) would be similar to the cost of your investment (subject to weather, growing conditions etc).

However by this stage the value of your investment as an appreciating asset would obviously be much greater. If you should need to sell at that stage, you would be highly unlikely to harvest the timber and sell it as a commodity; you would be far better selling the investment as an appreciating asset, through us, to a professional hardwood investor. The value has increased as an appreciating asset as the investment is now 5 years closer to maturity thus the investor has less time to wait until his final yield.

Around this time the trees will have started to outgrow their environment and the plantation management may recommend that your trees be thinned. Thinning is the process where the stronger, straighter and taller trees are allowed to flourish by harvesting the smaller weaker trees. As a rule of thumb, 50% of the original 200 saplings would be harvested at this point.

Assuming that you have decided to retain your investment at this stage, you will receive the proceeds from the sale of the timber. Again as a rule of thumb, you should expect to see around half of your original investment returned to you at this stage.

Bear in mind that Teak grows at around 50% per annum. By year ten the total timber value of the remaining 100 or so trees (again at TODAYS timber prices) would be around £23,000.

If you choose to harvest your trees at this point after management and harvesting costs you would be left with around £20,000. Added to the £5,000 (circa) that you received from the first thinning you would have seen a return of £25,000 on your original investment of £10,000 in 10 years.

If you wished to see an even greater return on your investment at this point, consider the following.

The VOLUME of teak will increase 7 fold (even taking further thinning into account) between year 10 and year 25 (the maximum term of your investment.)

As such the value of your investment to a professional hardwood investor, as an APPRECIATING ASSET at this stage, is obviously far greater than the value of timber as a COMMODITY.

Of course the decision as to whether you sell your investment at this stage or indeed any other stage is entirely up to you. You can ‘cash in’ and sell your timber as a commodity at any time. You can ‘cash in’ and sell the investment as an appreciating asset at any time or you may retain the investment for the full term and benefit not only from the maximum yield after the 25 year final harvest, but from the regular tinning profits every 4 years or so.

If you wish to substantially increase your holdings without spending any more money then we offer an 'Avalanche' scheme where rather than receiving payments from the profits of the thinning, these are re-invested and used to buy more and more teak trees. By the time your original investment trees are at full maturity you will have created a substantial holding that will produce regular income for yourself and for your family for many many years to come. If you continue to reinvest all profits in avalanche schemes this investment becomes perpetual income for many