Hargreaves Lansdown, the UK's largest DIY investing platform, announced the removal of its exit charges today and called for all its rivals to do the same. The move follows the lead of Interactive Investor and Fidelity, which have already scrapped the controversial fees that hinder competition by putting a barrier up for investors who want to switch to another platform.

To break through the usual jargon, Interactive Investor has split its 140-odd options into three categories - 'avoids', 'considers' and 'embraces' - to explain their dominant investing style. The list doesn't rate fund performance, but is an attempt at showing people the full range of ethical investments available.

We are offering readers the chance to win a £20,000 cash prize and £500 weekly prizes in our new Fantasy Share Picking Game to celebrate This is Money's 20th birthday. The game is free to play and all you need to do is pick the best performing shares over 12 weeks to compete for the grand prize - while you can also set up private leagues to challenge your friends, family and colleagues.

In 1997 Jason Sayers, a keen 26-year-old cricketer, became captain of the Weybridge 1st XI. One of his cricketing pals worked shifts in a local restaurant and was badly burnt one evening, as he cleaned the kitchen fryer.  Sayers thought there had to be a safer way of doing the job than emptying hot oil into a bucket beneath the fryer. He scouted around and eventually found a factory in Harrogate that filtered engine oil. 

Could backing the new energy sector instead deliver the returns they desire, whilst also protecting the world we live in? We speak to Chris Tanner, of JLEN, Environmental Assets.

Choosing the right DIY platform is crucial but a wealth of choice and changes to charges have left many investors scratching their heads. We pick some of the best. We also highlight why investing in an Isa makes sense, as it should protect your hopefully growing investments from tax forever.

As two pieces of research this week highlighted it's not necessarily what an investment pays out now that matters - it's what it pays out compared to the price you bought it at. Simon Lambert looks at the list of dividend hero investment trusts with bumper yields for those who bought a decade ago and the FTSE 350 shares with payouts that beat inflation over ten years.

But savers need to be cautious. The company behind the site Global Property Markets is not an Isa provider but a lead generator, which - as it admits - is not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority. It has one director and has been around since March 2018.

In 2016, I held shares in mining company Amari through Barclays Stockbrokers. Amari was bought by Australian company Perseus Mining on terms that included giving me warrants exercisable at 44 cents. For two years I pressed Barclays for my warrant certificate, to no avail. In 2018, Perseus shares rose to 50 cents, meaning I could buy at 44 cents and immediately sell at 50 cents, but I could not as Barclays had still not produced the warrant certificate.

Investing through funds and trusts gets you diversification, and gives you exposure to many asset classes, markets and strategies. But how do you distribute your savings across them, to build a portfolio that's spread widely enough to mitigate risk and achieve your goals - while dodging rookie traps like duplication or simply holding too much to comfortably manage.

UK investors holding overseas equities could have seen their investment lifted by nearly 14 per cent since the EU referendum due to the drop in sterling. Data shows the S&P 500 has returned 61.87 per cent in sterling since 1st July 2016, even though the index only made a gain of 48.26 per cent in dollar terms, a difference of 13.61 per cent.

This week, traders were spooked by a US 'yield curve inversion' which signals unusual behaviour in the government bond markets, and is often a harbinger of recession. The inversion occurs when market players demand higher interest rates for loaning a country money in the short term than they will over the long term. We look at what this means, whether a recession is coming, and how individual investors might respond.

When it comes to buying and selling cryptocurrencies, it is the Wild West out there. This is Money guides you through wallets, exchanges and CFDs. We also reveal how one reader made a big profit buying and selling ripple - but it involved sending his passport and bank details to Slovenia...

Income investors are always on the hunt for steady and strong dividends, but many of them would not consider Asia to be the place to go looking. However, Mike Kerley, of Henderson Far East Income has rewarded investors willing to back his investment trust with a solid stream of dividends combined with share price growth in recent years.

Investing is one of those things that most people know they should do and far fewer actually get around to until much later in life. But saving small and often is without doubt the easiest and safest way to grow your money over your lifetime and, ideally, build a nest egg to fund your retirement in the future.

Our national obsession with squirreling savings away in cash deposits rather than choosing potentially higher-earning investments costs households more than £30 billion in lost returns. But investing doesn't mean that you have to take a huge gamble with your savings pot, we explain how to get started and make your money work harder.

Britain's biggest banks axed or scaled back investment services following a clean-up of the financial industry that banned cosy backdoor commission deals four years ago. But now most banks are bringing back investment options for customers under the new regime. We round up what the top players are offering and what it costs.

While many people dislike the idea of an annuity, the alternative means keeping your pension invested in retirement and managing it yourself - a process that can be confusing and full of pitfalls. So here's a checklist, from investing, to income, taxes, the state pension, inheritance, illness, financial advice and much else.

Investment fund names are often a baffling mixture of impressive but vague words, which mean little to people who aren't already clued up on financial jargon. People hoping to boost their savings by buying a fund or trust face a steep learning curve, unless they're lucky enough to have a friend in the know or are willing to fork out fees to a financial adviser. We offer a short cut, and explain what all the fancy terms really mean.

If you are new to investing then the huge number of funds and investment trusts on offer can be confusing. Fortunately, This is Money's experts have some ideas to get you started.