General News

A Dream Become a Nightmare – And a Plug for ShareSoc

There was a good article in the Daily Telegraph on Sunday (17/5/2015) explaining how Thatcher's dream of a share owning population has become a nightmare. She tried to create a nation of investors by privatisations and regulatory changes to improve business competition but instead many companies have ended up being sold to foreign buyers. Even worse there has been a collapse in private share ownership. The reported proportion of UK shares held by individuals has collapsed from 20% in 1994 to 11% ...

Who are the Election Winners and Losers?

Who are the General Election winners and losers? Well most investors have benefited because the market as a whole has risen today after the election results gave the Conservatives an unexpected victory. Specific sectors that benefited were house builders and utility companies. House builders were generally up at the time of writing this note, with Berkeley Group in particular up 10% - no doubt investors being relieved there would be no mansion tax affecting expensive properties in London.  Utility companies were ...

Why Share Certificates are Dangerous and We Need a New System

The national press have covered the story of Deryn and Derek Hemment who face a demand for £25,000 from Capita to replace lost share certificates. They held shares in Compass Group worth £1.5 million and Capita posted them new certificates via second class post. But they never arrived and cannot be traced. Capita says it's not their problem because their terms and conditions make it clear that certificates are sent at the recipients risk. Capita appear to have been acting as ...

The Chancellors Budget – Gin and Tonics All Round!

For private investors the Chancellor's Budget is mostly good, and we can all drink his health in spirits on which the tax is cut. The other good news is as follows: - The personal allowance will rise to £11,000 over two years from which all taxpayers will benefit and the threshold for higher rate income tax will also rise. - There will be a new flexible ISA where you can take money out and then put it back in within the same tax ...

MeetInvest – a Warning

ShareSoc was recently invited to promote a new web service named MeetInvest to our members. The email said that it provides a "tool for selecting stocks using the exact success formula of some of the world’s foremost investors including Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, Jim Slater or John Templeton". Of course anyone who thinks that Warren Buffett was successful based on a simple stock screening system is surely misinformed, but I thought it was worth trying out and reviewing. The promotional videos are ...

Affected by the Oil/Gas Price slump? Weir, Petrofac and IDOX

I don't think any investor will be unaware that the price of oil has fallen off a cliff in the last few weeks. It was good to hear at the IDOX AGM this morning (26/2/2015) that the impact on their business was relatively minor - they supply engineering management information software plus public sector software and the former does have about 11% of sales in the oil/gas sector. The share price barely moved after a positive announcement in the morning that ...

Closet Index Trackers – Investigations in Progress

Since publishing a previous article on closet index trackers back in December 2014, the topic has received a lot more coverage in the financial press. Closet index trackers are those investment funds that claim to be "actively" managed and charge fees more commonly appropriate to that investment management process, while in reality their funds are so similar to those of index tracking funds that they match the index. The allegation is that they are obtaining higher fees on the pretence of ...

Forex trading and the Swiss Franc

The abrupt change of policy by Swiss authorities to relax the limit on the value of the Swiss Franc against the Euro has caused substantial chaos in foreign currency markets. Alpari, one of the leading forex trading platforms in the UK, has gone into administration and others such as Saxo Bank admitted they would incur losses as a result. In the case of UK listed company IG Group it had some impact on their share price and they had to say ...

Pensioner Bonds on Sale

The new bonds available from National Savings & Investments (NS&I) went on sale today (15/1/2015). Technically called "65+ Guaranteed Growth Bonds", they have been dubbed "Pensioner Bonds" by the media. You need to be 65 years of age or older to purchase these bonds but they do offer a very attractive interest rate in comparison with current bank deposit rates. Interest is either 2.8% per annum for a one year bond, or 4% for a three year bond. The maximum that ...

Royal Mail and Myners’ report on other Government sell-offs

The Government sell-off of a major stake in Royal Mail was controversial in many ways. It proved to be even more so when the placing price of £3.30 was rapidly eclipsed by a market price which rose to as high as £6 although it's been mostly downhill since (at the time of writing it's 420p). The long term holders who were given priority in the share allocation soon turned out to be anything but with 44% of the shares changing hands ...