BeeBop does UK

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Originally Posted by GTM 3442

Fully agree with BeeBop about Internaxx. Access to a multi-currency account, and to all the markets I'm interested in (EXCEPT New Zealand).

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Interactive Brokers is also very good with share costs typically being US$1-2 a trade. If trading the ASX if is typically AU$6 a trade. There is a minimum charge of US$10 per month if you hold less than US$100,000 cash or shares with any trading costs included within this US$12.

A good trading price....I haven't heard any negatives about IB which is a good thing.

Now that I am about to enjoy my summer in the Southern NZ winter; it is time for another update on my UK investing and hasn’t it been a volatile month or two!

SO far, I am up, again, but I expect the growth folio will continue to swing a little up and down. My good performers have been Alexander Darwell’s Jupiter European Opportunites (JEO) and Monks Investment Trust (MNKS). For JEO, the “little hassle” over Germany’s Wirecard (WDI) fraud accusation has gone away returning the fund to near its previous highs. The fund is quite concentrated and is dominated by WDI at around 16% so I do watch what is going on with WDI. Added to JEO, MNKS has been great. In fact, its performance now exceeds that of its big brother Scottish Mortgage Fund over 1 and 3 years (I think). I selected MNKS because I really liked its increased diversification and its careful balance in four key areas allowing a global balance and as it is my largest holding (fees now 0.5%); care was necessary because I don’t like negative returns very much.

On the other side, the education allocation of the folio, I have found that there is effectively near zero growth. Maybe, I should be thankful that it isn’t negative! Anyways, to deal with the fact that I believe I have selected some great income trusts and shares that will soon compound nicely, I bit the bullet and am putting the dividends into a lightly leveraged small cap fund called the Acorn Income Fund (AIF). It pays 5.3% and is made up of smaller cap UK companies, the leverage seems complicated to me but it does swing quite “nicely” both up and down. We shall see no doubt! And over time, things should be fine.

And of course, my single conviction stock (Trifast) produced a solidly boring annual update on Tuesday. At 16% of the growth folio, I am happy with this especially as the dividend is continually increasing, although the cover has reduced to around 2.4x (from 3x). Nuts and bolts seem to be popular at the moment and the company is growing gently taking into account its global footprint.

On a side note, I am thankful that I ignored advice and recommendations to buy into Woodford’s managed fund. The number of people who have told me he was a guru turned me off the fund. Personally, I found him a tad arrogant and he reminds me of characters I saw in my corporate years; he lacks humility. But I don’t like OEICs as it takes me too close to the GFC, I would rather a closed-end fund that has a good degree of liquidity.

I doubt that I will add any significant purchases this year to the UK folio. As the USD/NZD exchange rate is quite in my favour, I will push some cash down south for the next wee while and maybe take a wee holiday from shares. If there was any way I had the self-control, I would leave it all alone and “go bush” for a while and let it do its thing. Does going down to Stewart Island count as going bush?

Must get my life sorted out now as I hop onto my last leg of flights to NZ. I had the pleasure of enjoying a row of seats to myself last night in front of a deportee from the UK being escorted to Dhaka (there were five escorts and one medic). Needless to say, he wasn’t a happy Chappy and had a narrow vocabulary consisting of Mother F c k r on repeat. Having had a 20 hour stopover, I am ready for my ultra long haul night flight. I thank whoever it was that invented noise cancelling headphones.

BB, enjoy the break and hope you make to Oban and Stewart Is. Wonderful winter weather at moment and with Trump & Xi talking again, we can expect markets to remain upbeat for a little longer...

BB you use investment trusts, how do they now compare with the many ETFs available. I use Scottish Mortgage as my active manager with a low MER below 0.5%,. I have a few specialist ITs in biotech and health but have been disappointed.

For me, Investment trust have outperformed. BUT I have been careful on my purchase value e.g I buy when they are below their average price/NAV AND I select strong performance over 1 yr, 3 yr, 5 yr and 10 yrs. SMT has outperformed over the long-term so I am guessing that you bought in on a high. I own MNKS (little brother to SMT) and it has performed exceedingly well for me. I chose it over SMT as it is more diversified and is less exposed to the high tech stocks that have suffered recently. Of course, both SMT and MNKS are long term holds, not for those that can’t weather a down year. SMT has certainly outperformed it’s global passive index (Global IT) over 10 years.

The two screenshots below are of SMT and come from www.trustnet.com

Attachment 10654
Attachment 10655



I read this article only a day or so ago, and I think it provides good reading on the topic https://www.trustnet.com/news/745751...06ead-77298025

I do have one ETF (on the US exchange), and it is IGF which is an infrastructure fund. I purchased this as an ETF as I couldn’t find any Investment Trust that clearly outperformed the index. There are many listed trusts that are merely index trackers (and I have held them too until I wised up to the indicators, in fact, I think that my Merchants is barely better that tracking the FTSE100 but it is more reliable in a downmarket and has a better yield and 130 yr strong performance history).

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Originally Posted by nizzy

BB, enjoy the break and hope you make to Oban and Stewart Is. Wonderful winter weather at moment and with Trump & Xi talking again, we can expect markets to remain upbeat for a little longer...

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Nizzy;

Thank-you, I have booked and paid for the trip over - super keen on visiting Ulva Island there too.

Thankfully, I have been super busy so have not been spending too much time looking at the markets....mostly focused on preparing another wee property and have been in my ‘grease monkey gloves, swandri, beanie, and 1994 car with old tapes beating out of the ‘stereo’ with my wind-down windows!!...that is what I call a holiday.

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Originally Posted by voltage

BB you use investment trusts, how do they now compare with the many ETFs available. I use Scottish Mortgage as my active manager with a low MER below 0.5%,. I have a few specialist ITs in biotech and health but have been disappointed.

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Voltage

in my morning reading today, I have just read this article and thought of your post. I have done very nicely out of JEO, and as an IT it has performed way above its passive index meaning that its fees are not really an issue (for me). However, my big issue is always being aware of its holdings; in particular its very high exposure to Wirecard and by a lesser amount RELX (the main reasons I bought in) AND the fund manager’s name/reputation.

https://citywire.co.uk/investment-tr...+Insider+Daily

Recently, Neil Woodford’s Fund has been a disaster for investors. Many investors went with him due to his reputation and he was confident, forgetting (in my opinion) that he was managing other people’s money and that the fund was more of a “patient” fund (you may or may not get the pun). Many, also, believe in Nick Train’s fund which has around a 100% premium on it, again, investors piling in on the brand and history alone. We all know what happens to those who think the past predicts the future. So for me, I am a constant watcher of the fantastic funds as I don’t want the manager to be the value....it should be the holdings.

Short Update on Folio

On another note: I sold my index fund IGF on the NASDAQ 30 minutes ago. It has performed very nicely in my four month holding, was in USD, and the GBP has just dropped again (or more likely the USD has strengthened), so the money is going over to my child’s school fees, 0% interest, forward school fees account, to pay for the 2020/2021 fees, which puts me nearly two years paid up in advance. The cash in the hand, where there is a financial target to meet is fundamental to my sanity and ability to invest. I can buy some more IGF in another market lull when I am gathering USD again.

And today is my last morning of wearing my grease-monkey gloves, old beanie, and driving the old car. I have to done my shirt, blazer, and jump on an aeroplane again ready for a bit of face-to-face property work for a couple of days.....soon after, though, I get my kid off an unaccompanied minor flight from the UK, we slip on our Swandri’s, gummies, beanies, and get ourselves to Stewart Island. The financial market can palpitate all it wants as I will have no short-term bad debt, I have school fees, and have cold hard cash in my pocket from selling old stored stuff on trademe!

All the best, and enjoy investing, just don’t look short, or get caught short!

A bah humbug now....I finally took the bullet and sold my Jupiter India fund. I got a bit caught out with this one due to the takeover of Internaxx which meant that I got hit with increased fees due to the non-compliance of the unit trust (note: I don’t like unit trusts, I prefer listed investment trusts). In addition to that, the fund has not performed well due to the manager having predominantly domestic stocks in India which are not enjoying the growth that the export sector is getting.

As I am trying to concentrate the growth folio, it made sense to sell this. It is a tiny holding and the holding costs are about GBP100 per year, the same cost as my entire folios costs for using Internaxx. So a 14.10% loss has been swallowed (but hasn’t really dented the bottom line just my ego).

Now the challenge is where to put the funds....I think I will add to my CAML (Central Asia Metals) holding as it has no stamp duty, pays around 5.5% dividend, is kind of emerging, is well undervalued, and increases my exposure to commodities.

Over the past three months, I have turned my hand to hard manual labour, and a bit of outdoor hiking. With the markets in the state they have been in, it was a good solution to prevent any mishandling by me. My wee sojourn to Stewart Island was superb and a short stop in both Gore and Invercargill added a lot of interest: thoughts are stirring about a return to rural roots which may actually be a possibility if this accidental property developer pulls off the biggest project in their lifetime (and doesn't end up in a desperate state in the process). The little unit I "lightly refreshed" is now rented, my NZ car stored with gumboots and tools inside, I have finished hiking 100 miles in more northern climes and have returned to the heat of the Middle East and my large iMac with spreadsheets and accounts to complete.

So where are my share folios now? The UK based growth one is essentially where it was in early June, the more conservative one is up a tad, and my NZ folio is up considerable thanks to my penchant for high yield purchases. Other than my opportunistic buy and sell of a US listed global infrastructure fund, I have kept my active fingers off the folios. Exchange rates have been superb for me at the moment with both the NZD and the GBP achieving good lows, I was able to fund one renovation without taking on debt and nearly complete cash gathering for the 2021/2022 academic year (important risk mitigations for the family). Meanwhile with the drop of the OCR, the NZ folio skyrocketed for me. So much so, that now I am beginning to wonder if it is even worth holding on to it as I only really have one growth stock in the folio - maybe I should revert to my old practice of "banking the gains" into a mortgage? Hmmm not the best yield approach but it may well allow me to sleep better at night - the yields on the shares are now barely better than a good bank deposit and the share prices are possibly fair to overvalued. Sometimes I wish someone could tell me what to do! Let us see what happens over the next two weeks or so.

And will Saudi retaliate against Iran, even more jets flying over head now: not only the US grey ones, but also the more local white ones...watch those oil prices!
Invest well and stay patient and take a risk here and there.
BeeBop.