Richard is a highly-respected investment writer well-known for his Share Sleuth portfolio, a model portfolio he runs for the investment platform Interactive investor. Richard eats his own cooking – buying good businesses at reasonable prices and holding them for the long-term in his Self Invested Personal Pension.
I’m a long-time ShareScope and SharePad fan and my aim is to help you find better companies faster using the fantastic tools at your disposal. My focus is on finding businesses we can reasonably expect to prosper for many years. As well as analysing data, I work out the strategies companies are following and try to verify that they are working in the real world by quizzing executives, visiting companies, trying their products and observing how they operate.
Richard looks at one of his least favourite kinds of business – asset managers. Love them or loathe them, many London-listed asset managers are profitable and financially sound. Investors, aka asset managers, are not my favourite category of share. The financial world is precarious to me, which is why long ago I decided to take
There is very little 5 Strikes action, so Richard takes the opportunity to slide Inchcape onto the front burner. Over the last eight years, the company has sharpened its focus on motor vehicle distribution. Deciding what to focus on is the basis of good strategy. Since my last article only two shares have published annual
From a pool of more than 200 shares, Richard hones in on software company Kainos (again), fast food favourite Greggs, motor vehicle distributor Inchcape, integrated pet shop and vet group Pets at Home, and defence technology supplier Cohort. On the horizon: posh wallpaper and fabric designer Colefax and Gately, a law firm. Well, maybe not
Richard examines fault after fault in businesses until he can find no more. If the faults should not cause permanent damage, the share is an investment candidate. Currently, Kainos is in the spotlight and Iomart and IG enter the pipeline. I am compiling a list of all the companies with a few flaws in their
The latest haul of investment candidates from Richard includes a software company, a timber importer, a one-of-a-kind fantasy gaming and modelling company Games Workshop, a housebuilder and a business so small you may never have heard of it. Just to recap and contextualise, 5 Strikes is a quick way of deciding which shares are the
Richard’s 5 Strikes system puts three very different businesses in the frame: Athleisure brand Lululemon, Gamma Communications – an IT company that supplies communications systems, and MS International, which manufactures naval cannon. Bingo! Well, almost Bingo. In my last article, I promised to order the results of my 5 Strikes system by number of strikes
Richard scratches the itch that is payments company PayPoint. Maybe his time would have been better spent investigating one of the other companies on his research list, Cranswick, say, or Castings, but he has no regrets. The main focus of this article is PayPoint. There’s no snappy adjective I can use to describe Paypoint because
The latest haul of 5 strikes shares includes Halma and RS, proof perhaps that big companies can gallop, or at least trot. Richard also doffs his cap to Bloomsbury Publishing and works out how profitable Next 15 really is. We’re in a low period for annual report publishing as the large number of companies that
The standout share from Richard’s latest 5 Strikes haul is Pets at Home, a dominant pet care business in the UK with a strong financial track record. Fifteen companies have passed the Minimum Quality Filter since my last update, but the finances of only three score less than three strikes, according to the 5 strikes
Richard’s 5 Strikes systems discover four more potential long-term investments, but he doesn’t investigate any of them. Instead, he’s drawn to B-Corp aspirant and gaggle of consultancies Next 15. It has only two strikes to tarnish its name. Since the last 5 Strikes update, my 5 Strikes system has discovered four more candidates for long-term
Bad news: customer service is in decline in the UK. Good news, we can still invest in the companies bucking the trend. Richard sprinkles some stardust on SharePad to reveal companies that are doing the right thing and reaping the rewards. A chance encounter with an article about declining standards of customer service in the
The latest companies to pass Richard’s 5 strikes system include a direct seller of swag, an estate agent franchise, an engineer that should galvanise investors, a soft drinks company, and a market-leading mortgage intermediary. Since my last update, I have run 16 shares through the 5 Strikes system. Five achieved less than three strikes. This