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Profiting from the UK stock market liquidation [Members]
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Very interesting post, perhaps because I am thinking along similar lines!!
Britain in terminal decline ? We saw that in the late 70’s the outlook really was awful and yet a few years later everything looked different and better.
The governments U Turn on winter fuel allowance does not make me think they have the stomach to do anything dramatic.
Wow, Moguls membership is at an all-time high and yet comments are at an all-time low… dare I decide that this means Moguls are satisfied (/rendered comatose 😉 ) after my latest 5,000-word epic with, as Munger used to put it, Nothing to Add? 🙂
@Hariseldon — Cheers! Re: Britain in terminal decline, while I’ve obviously been at the forefront of moaning about the direction of travel over the past ten years, I do note in the piece that I think the pace of decline has at least been arrested.
It’s hard to get enthusiastic about the revenue collection side of Reeves’ year and a bit so far, but then being in a hole is seldom a place with great views…
I would distinguish between the London stock market and Britain though.
It’s pretty easy to envisage the London stock market going the way of the Manchester Stock Exchange and the rest over the next 20-30 years, given recent developments. But that won’t doom Britain — or even the City of London.
But as I said around the 3000-word mark (for the benefit of those who stopped for a nap 😉 ) we possibly did have a chance to share consolidated developed world equities trading with New York, under the old integration with the EU.
As things stand I don’t know why French and German companies feeling their own markets too constraining would come to London versus the NYSE or Nasdaq, not least because the LSE itself is shrinking and losing liquidity…
I really enjoy reading these, but don’t often comment!
Last year I bought some Rockwood last year after reading your article, but had to sell it for house move. I’m tempted to buy back in again. I am more heavily weighted to the UK than a global market cap tracker would be, and am generally happy with that.
TI – you often caveat yourself whenever you give an opinion, but I think for the mogul membership you can be a bit more brazen and direct. We like and trust you, so just fire your thoughts out!
@Markabey — Really appreciate the kind words, both about the piece and about my opinions! 🙂 However I do have to reiterate that my various disclaimers and caveats are not just boilerplate.
Firstly, like most such newsletters we are not FCA regulated. Readers should not treat my posts as investment advice, and they will have no redress if they do — which is important.
Moguls (and Monevator readers in general) have to be self-directed, for their own sakes. I don’t want people doing things based on my say-so that they don’t properly understand, or have a reason for doing it for themselves.
If my articles are good first jumping off point into further research and a profitable investment, that’s great. But the member can take the credit, because they are doing the extra work and making the decisions.
Like this I guess in my own little way I’m more trying to teach what I know about fishing, so readers can fish for themselves. 🙂
The other reason to move with caution is you never really know the full picture of someone else’s circumstances.
I might be very keen on something, but due to the risks only put a little of my portfolio into it. (Say Reddit when I wrote about that last year). Perhaps it’s because I think it’s very risky; certainly I’m always *very* diversified. On the other hand my little 1% position might be bigger than some members’ annual savings in £ terms, and at the same time smaller than what a few readers spend on their summer holidays! It’s impossible to know or give that context without complete and utter transparency.
In my view it’d have to go beyond knowing what’s in my portfolio, you’d also have to know my house, my mortgage, my earnings etc — and even then I would never know every members (very different) circumstances.
I detail more in this in the post I link to every month here:
https://monevator.com/too-good-to-be-true-how-to-approach-investment-opinion-commentary-and-third-party-analysis.
Finally, investing for me is a game of probabilities. I’m never certain or even ‘very confident’ about anything except for cash! I’m 60/40 or 80/20 or I can see it going three ways type of guy.
So often what might seem a caveat is really just me trying to communicate that I’m trying to act/decide through a range of possibilities.
It’s often said if you’re getting 6/10 calls right in investing your record will be great. That will still leave 4/10 calls being bad, and here I’ve members who will read about some of them, versus if I was just investing my own money for good or ill.
Given all the above, I feel I have to keep caveating.
Yes it might get boring for regular members, or seem timid or whatnot, but I can’t know if a particular member has read my caveating 100x before or this is the first time. 🙂
I do agree it Moguls is a bit different; it’s why I’m writing about all this stuff on Monevator again, after many years of really being very circumspect about it.
But the price of entry I’ve set for myself is to really ensure everyone realises we’re playing an uncertain game with imperfect information that’s very hard to win.
That’s not from false modesty; basically I think this posture is the only one to have if you actually want to win! 😉 So I suppose I’m trying to communicate that too.
Sorry if this reply seems a bit OTT to what was a generous and supportive comment… 🙂 But it seems a good opportunity to explain a bit more my thinking. Cheers!
I’m a mogul in name only. I’m ‘paying it forward’ so that others can get the free insights I benefited from. The price is a small fraction of the fees that would have been extracted from my portfolio if a colleague had not pointed me in the direction of the excellent writing on Monevator. I don’t take the cry to bear down on costs to the extreme of excluding paying for things that are of value to me.
Mogul pieces remind me that I’m no mogul. I find the caveats add colour, and often give me an off ramp – a rationalisation that an alternative path isn’t necessarily a disaster.
@Nearly There — Heartening comment and gesture – thank you.
@Nearly There – Seconded. You summarised my position perfectly as well.
Love the active stuff for Moguls. It’s way more than paid for itself with the various high discount to NAV ITs I’ve been buying after reading your articles.
Not sure if anyone here heard of ‘Undervalued-shares dot com’ (two different levels of subscription).
About half of his picks are London AIM liquidation / take-over / undervalued plays.
I mainly go for his speculative natural resource picks….
Also his free weekly newsletter is great value.
Maybe a variation on Tactic #1 is to buy/ continue to hold Vanguard LifeStrategy. For me, VLS 60 & 80 were the pathway to low-cost index ETFs. For many years, I’ve seen the high UK weighting (c20%, if I’m not mistaken) as a bit of a problem & a good reason (along with the relatively high AMC) not to buy any more. But if the UK markets are due a re-rating, then my VLS holdings may start to look like an inspired choice- I can’t see it happening, anytime soon, but what do I know?
@JonathanH — Hmm, it’s true that Vanguard LifeStrategy is very overweight UK stocks versus the global market. I hadn’t previously considered that as an easy way to tilt away from high US equity valuations, let alone to tilt towards overweighting the UK. Interesting jujutsu possibility to utilise a very passive one-shot fund to express an active view 😉
@DaleK @Algernond — Cheers!
@Nearly There – a perfect summary of my thoughts too. I really enjoy these articles as they give me plenty of food for thought to tinker with my portfolio as I start to near the point where I have to think about a decumulation strategy. I find these prompt me to go and dig further myself to make sure I think I understand it (time will tell!) before dipping a toe in the water on some of the stuff I wouldn’t have thought about before (i.e., global small cap value, momentum factor).
@TI – thank you and please keep going 🙂