The FTSE 100 closed around 6,487 to 24 December down -15% from the start of the year. From a peak of 7670 in mid-January the index fell by -35% to a low of 4998 at the end of March before recovering +30%. A reminder of the importance of pound cost averaging, because a -30% drop, […]
Month: December 2020
Lessons from lockdown and other stories
This year has confirmed that most of the news is at best irrelevant to me as an investor. Worse, the news stressed me out. It regularly fed my mind with impossible problems to solve. Companies I admired closed down, temporarily I hoped. They raised money in emergency fund-raisings. They furloughed staff. So far, the determination […]
Weekly Commentary: 21/12/20 – Bidding up Codemasters
The FTSE stayed level around 6580, while Nasdaq hit a new high of 12752. Bitcoin rose through $20,000 for the first time. I have a dim memory of a party in South London, around 2006-2007, when someone began trying to convince me that everyone could create their own electronic currency. After all, he said, money […]
Lessons from the Trend (Part 1): Breakouts
All the best trends in the market need to start somewhere. I’m going to show you how to define a trend using two methods and offer some thoughts and reasoning on position management. For my next two articles I will focus on primary trends. If you are unsure what I mean by primary trends please […]
Weekly Commentary: 14/12/20 – Taxes steering behaviour?
After a strong November and start of December the FTSE 100 was largely unchanged this week at 6566. More broadly, the signs of a cyclical recovery are evident: oil price rose through $50 a barrel and copper and other industrial commodities have also been strong. Airbnb IPO’ed with the shares closing on their first day […]
Nichols: More than Vimto
Having prospected for investments in the soft drinks industry, I think Nichols is perhaps the most intriguing of quite an interesting group. It has been enormously profitable and a steady grower, unlike the other candidate, Fever-Tree, which has experienced both extraordinary profit and extraordinary growth. Fever-Tree makes me nervous. Explosive growers rarely keep growing rapidly […]
Weekly Commentary: 07/12/20 – Vaccine inoculating risk tolerance
The best performing FTSE 100 stock last week was Rolls Royce, up 19%. The worst was Unilever down 6.5%, which suggests expectations of a vaccine are inoculating investors against risk. On Nasdaq, the vaccine stock Moderna, was the best performing up 44% in the last 5 days, while Zoom was the second worst performing down […]
Alpesh Patel on US Investing: Stocks set to rally in 2021
“Goldman Sachs says these stocks are set to rally in 2021” It’s a captivating headline, isn’t it? Don’t worry; I’ll tell you which stocks in a moment and whether I agree with Goldman’s. And between Goldman’s history and my own, you might want to bet on me. The US market’s Dow Jones Industrial Average just […]
The Dynamic 35 : The Schroders Asian Total Return Trust
Traditionally most investors tend to regard the division between developed markets (DM) and emerging markets (EM) as a simple divide. We all put more money in the DM but then try and make sure we have some, smaller exposure, to the broad gaggle of national markets which represents the developing world or EM for short. […]
