Education

Investment styles – Phil Oakley, Richard Beddard and Roger Lawson

Last week Phil Oakley, who mainly writes for ShareScope/SharePad, published a very interesting article entitled “A Blueprint for Better Long Term Investing”. This described his investment style in essence and contained lots of good tips from an experienced stock market analyst. For example: “Focus on businesses not stocks”, “Don’t overpay for quality companies” and “Avoid information overload”. It’s well worth reading and is here in full: Oakley-Article Experienced investor Richard Beddard also joined that company recently and published an article entitled “Shares ...
Post Date: September 5, 2017 Read more

How Many Stocks?

There was an interesting article in this week’s Investors Chronicle by John Rosier which discussed the number of holdings he had in his portfolio. He had attended a presentation by a well-known private investor who had 25% of his portfolio in one stock. John questioned whether he held too many stocks in his own portfolio (32 according to his portfolio list). He mused that Neil Woodford held 135 stocks in his UK Equity Income Fund but the largest 10 positions made ...
Post Date: August 21, 2017 Read more

Guide to ShareSoc’s new Events Page

As part of the redevelopment of ShareSoc's website, we have enhanced our directory of events. Our aim is that it should be the "go to" place for investors in the UK wishing to find out about interesting events relating to investment. We therefore list not only our own events, but any worthwhile investment related events from 3rd parties (subject to our editorial control). If you know of any upcoming event which we have not listed, please let us know. The main body of ...
Post Date: July 6, 2017 Read more

Interesting FT Articles on Fund Performance , Nick Train and Executive Pay

There have been some very interesting articles in the FT in the last few days. On the 25th February John Authers discussed market timing and passive versus active management. He quoted consumer research group Dalbar who have compared active and passive funds. Although passive funds have beaten active funds in the long term, because of their lower costs, investors in active funds have received higher returns in the last 15 years. How can that be? It's because to quote: "Holders of ...
Post Date: February 28, 2017 Read more

Asset Management Market Study

I commented previously on the FCA's Asset Management Market Study, which suggested there was weak competition in this market. Needless to say, most asset managers do not seem to agree. ShareSoc has now submitted a response to the questions raised in that document which you can read here: Asset-Management-Market-Study-Response-2017-02-21. In summary, we agree with the general conclusions and support regulatory intervention where necessary. We also note that although the study does not address the issue directly of financial education, it is our view ...
Post Date: February 22, 2017 Read more

Brexit, Industrial Strategy and Productivity

What next now that we are committed to Brexit? Well first we need an "industrial strategy" to help us develop a new place in the world and possibly to pay for the up to £60 billion that might be demanded by the EU (as settlement for outstanding commitments if you believe that - yes divorce can be expensive). Now it just so happens that the Government has just published a Green Paper entitled "Building our Industrial Strategy" on that topic which ...
Post Date: February 2, 2017 Read more

Share Tipsters Poor Performance in 2016

There was an article published on stock screens in the last edition of the ShareSoc Informer Newsletter which has just been issued. It reviewed a number of published screens and the performance overall was poor, mainly because few of them tipped mining or oil sector stocks. So how did the national newspapers share tipsters perform in comparison? Private Eye just published a report on that subject. It said only one national newspaper, the Sunday Times, beat the index with its collective tips. ...
Post Date: January 18, 2017 Read more

Learning from the Experts 2 – Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust

A previous blog post covered how one could learn from experts such as Harry Nimmo at Standard Life UK Smaller Companies Trust. Another company, but a very different one, I hold is Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust (SMT) and I thought this comment in their recently received Interim Report was worthy of note: "Outlook: There is a strong structural asymmetry in equity market returns, given the potential for a successful company to grow to many times its size. This means it is of ...
Post Date: November 20, 2016 Read more

FCA Study of Asset Management – Interesting Interim Results

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has published an interim report on its Asset Management Market Study. Some of the results are not that surprising, but others are. For example, it reports that around half of retail investors were not aware that they were paying fund charges. Needless to point out perhaps that can be linked to another conclusion. Namely that there is weak price competition. How can investors be expected to compare prices when they are not even aware of the charges? Indeed ...
Post Date: November 18, 2016 Read more

Do Active Funds Underperform? But Costs are the Real Problem

On the 24 October the Financial Times FTfm supplement led with a front page article that was headlined "99% of Active US equity funds underperform". It also had a sub heading of "Almost all UK, global and EM funds have failed to outperform since 2006". So I sent a letter to the Editor which said the following, much of which they have published today (31/10/2016) plus letters from other writers making the same point. This is what my letter said: "Your headline in ...
Post Date: October 31, 2016 Read more