Yesterday was another dismal day in the markets. The US fell significantly allegedly caused by the rise in interest rates announced by the Federal Reserve and the UK market followed it down this morning. The US rate rise was widely expected although perhaps slightly lower estimates for US economic growth had an impact. But when the markets are in a bear mood, excuses for selling abound. Meanwhile the Bank of England has announced today that their base rate will remain at 0.75%. The UK market recovered somewhat after it’s early fall, even before that announcement at midday. Did it leak one wonders, or is it those city high fliers with big bonuses stimulating the market before it closes for Xmas? Or was it the news from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) that a de-merger was to take place? Many market trends are inexplicable so I won’t say any more on that subject.
The general state of markets was highlighted in a recent press release from the Association of Investment Companies (AIC). They represent investment trusts and reported that the industry’s assets hit an all-time high of £189 billion in September but pulled back subsequently. At the end of November the average investment company returned 1.3% over the prior year they said, but that suggests that when the year ends most will be lucky to show any return at all. Investors who manage to beat zero for 2018 should consider themselves either lucky or wise.
But the good news the AIC reported was that many investment trusts, 37 of them, have reduced fees in 2018. Even better news was that 9 of them abolished performance fees which I believe is a good move for investors. There is no evidence that performance fees improve investment managers’ performance and they just lead to higher fees. Needless to point out that the lack of returns in 2018 might have encouraged the trend to cut performance fees!
Not only that but the average return of 1.3% by investment companies beat that of the average of open funds who showed a loss of 2.6% and the FTSE All-Share with a loss of 6%. Perhaps this is because there are more specialist or stock-picking investment trusts as opposed to the many open-ended index trackers and heavy weighting in a few large cap dominated sectors in the FTSE. That shows the merits of investment trusts (I hold a number but very few open-ended funds).
Coming up to Xmas and the New Year, it’s worth warning investors about share trading in small cap stocks and investment trusts though. Both often have low liquidity and this is exacerbated over the holiday season as active investors take a break. The result is that such stocks can spike or decline on just a few trades. Might be a good time to take a holiday from following the markets even for us enthusiastic trend followers.
Yu Group (YU.) is the latest AIM company to report fictitious financial accounts. Yu Group is a utility supplier to businesses and only listed on AIM in March 2016, reached a share price peak of 1345p in March 2018 and is now 68p at the time of writing, i.e down 95% – ouch!
An announcement by the company yesterday, following a “forensic investigation” of its past accounts, reported more bad news including serious deficiencies in the finance function. They are now forecasting an adjusted loss before tax of between £7.35 million and £7.85 million for the year ending December 2018, but that excludes lots of exceptional costs including possible restatement of prior year accounts. Future cash flow is also called into question. In summary it’s yet another dire tale of incompetent if not downright fraudulent management in AIM companies which it seems likely the auditors did not spot. The FCA and FRC should be investigating events at this company with urgency. The AIM Regulatory and NOMAD system has also again failed to stop a listing of what clearly has turned out to be a real dog of a business.
Let us hope that the mooted changes to financial regulation in the UK bear some fruit to stop these kinds of disasters in future years. Risks of business strategy failures and general management incompetence we accept as investors. Likewise general economic trends, even Brexit risks, and investor emotions driving markets to extremes we accept as risks. But we should not need to accept basic accounting failures.
On that note, let me wish all my readers a Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
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