In his quest for companies that control their own destinies, Richard discovers luxury fashion brand Burberry, a company whose products he is in no danger of buying. Last time, I promised to investigate one of the shares I found while filtering for vertically integrated companies, companies that control their own destinies because they control many […]
Month: October 2019
Weekly Commentary: 28/10/19 – Sticking to our guns
Sticking to our guns Investing can be lonely. Buying stocks in a downturn can be hard – we don’t know if we are catching a falling knife. Traders tell us we should operate with a stop loss policy so we sell when a stock has gone down, say 20%, but for a long-term investor this […]
Screening For My Next Long-Term Winner: Rightmove
Studying free cash conversion is vital when evaluating a set of accounts. The measure compares free cash flow to reported earnings, and can indicate whether a business is a ‘cash fountain’ or a ‘cash guzzler’. Ideally we want to own companies that generate plenty of spare cash, because such cash can: * Underpin accounting profits; […]
Finding companies that control their own destinies
Fallout from the demise of Thomas Cook reminds Richard of the virtues of vertical integration. In the month since the demise of Thomas Cook, the company that invented package tours, there has been much talk of rivals who will benefit from the fact that perhaps 2.5m Thomas Cook customers will be looking elsewhere for their […]
Weekly Commentary: 21/10/19 – A New Era Dawns
A New Era Dawns Often it is easy to be so pre-occupied with the present that we miss the elephant quietly sauntering past the boardroom windows. The focus on Woodford Investment Management closing its doors over the week end was deafening. It will no doubt continue on BBC Panorama at 8.30 tonight when it airs […]
Weekly Commentary: 14/10/19 – Forex
Forex There are reasons to be gloomy just now. As I walked past Westminster last week the protester carrying an anti-Brexit placard looked forlorn as the extinction rebellion protesters drowned out his signage. Over in Hong Kong the protests are about something else altogether. While in Japan typhoons are disrupting the rugby. It is getting […]
Two Technical Analysis Tools You Need: Candlesticks and Volume
We briefly touched on technical analysis in my previous article ‘The Four Stages of a Stock’, and in this article I want to introduce some simple technical analysis components, which, if understood, can provide a lot of clarity on price action in the market. Candlesticks are said to have been invented by a Japanese rice […]
Weekly Commentary: 07/10/19 – Special Situations
Special Situations At times like this it is easy to make mistakes. I confess to being bored of my stocks. They haven’t done anything exciting for a while. The most exciting thing last week was Gervais Williams of Miton tipping Randall & Quilter in the Telegraph causing a 9% rise on the day. Volumes are […]
KAINOS
THE SETTING Kainos (Greek for fresh, innovative) was launched in 1986 when the old British IT champion ICL recognised the quality of computer science graduates from Queen’s University Belfast. ICL had a new project involving electricity network analysis and Queen’s had just set up one of the first university incubator companies, Qubis, which was keen […]
What PZ Cussons’ cashflow tells us about its strategy
Having found PZ Cussons through his Keep It Simple, Stupid filter, Richard examines the company through its cash flow statement. To his delight, he finds a company promising to keep things simple too. Two weeks ago I augmented my Keep it Simple, Stupid filter to keep things even simpler. The filter is designed to rule […]