I am not a great fan of the fund-management industry. I cannot think of another sector where the employees collect enormous salaries while the customers pay hefty fees and sometimes get nothing in return. Quite often us amateur investors are better off with simple index trackers rather than falling for the industry’s persuasive advisers and […]
Month: September 2020
Weekly Commentary: 28/09/20 – Beginner’s mind and Buy and Build
Markets sold off last week as virus case rises rose (FTSE 100 fell to below 5800 before recovering slightly later in the week, Nasdaq down 4% to 10,800). The virus itself seems reasonably predictable, everyone has been expecting cases to rise as summer turns to autumn. What hasn’t been predictable is Government responses around the […]
The Trader: The Impact of Coronavirus on Trading
One of the effects on Coronavirus has been to crash the entire stock market only to see it recover strongly. However, the impact of Coronavirus for the private investor and retail trader has been huge. Social media has contributed to market inefficiency It is a widely held view that the internet has created a more […]
Weekly Commentary: 21/09/20 – The long journey to exoneration
The FTSE 100 just about held its level above 6000 last week. Last week was Chilean Independence Day. It is a little known footnote in history that Lord Cochrane, who was involved in the great Stock Exchange scam of 1814 (accused of starting rumours of Napoleon’s death via the Admiralty’s semaphore telegraph) helped not one, […]
This time is different for Design Group
If you watch Design Group’s annual results presentation, you may detect a bashful smile on chief executive Paul Fineman’s face. Paul Fineman, chief executive of Design Group. Source: Design Group Full Year Results 2020 (video). Despite unexpected tariffs on products imported into the USA from China and the onset of the pandemic, Design Group was […]
Weekly Commentary: 14/09/20 – Americans on AIM
The oil price fell to a 3 month low in the middle of last week to below $40 a barrel. Oil is in contango (futures price higher than spot price) which suggests that despite production cuts, traders are still worried about demand over the next few months. Ironically Tesla shares were off even more sharply […]
The Trader: Spread Betting
Spread betting is another way of buying and selling shares. Instead of buying the actual stock when we purchase through our broker, in spread betting we are literally placing a bet on the stock that it will either rise or fall as defined by the spread. The spread is the price to buy and the […]
Screening For My Next Long-Term Winner: Fuller, Smith & Turner
First, a wealth warning. The last price-to-book ‘bargain’ I looked at for SharePad was Hammerson. Back then the property group’s £5 billion asset base could be acquired for a £1.6 billion market cap. Investors were in theory able to purchase £1 of assets for just 30p. Twelve months on, and the share price below tells […]
Weekly Commentary: 07/09/20 – Come back on St Leger Day
St Leger Day, as in ““Sell in May and go away, don’t come back till St Leger Day”, is approaching. I’ve always wondered who St Leger was, and why a saint might have had a horse race named in his honour. Was Saint Leger the patron saint of book making? Well no, it turns out […]
A company that is already successful
It would be convenient to report that I diligently pick every share I investigate from a Sharepad filter of exquisite construction, but it would be untrue. Sometimes I click around randomly until I find an interesting stock. I had heard Bunzl had had a “good pandemic”, and when I saw that its PE ratio and […]