Alliance Trust Live Discussion

Sid_Fridge 10 Nov 2018

Sale of Alliance Trust Savings Cheers, TJ

trader_jack 10 Nov 2018

Sale of Alliance Trust Savings Good morning Sid_fridge, You may ask but please remember that these were the choices I made and may not suit anybody else. They have already been documented on another page. Please remember that I have no expertise in picking what stocks to hold they are just my personal choice out of many 100’s available: BNKR, FGT, MRCH, SCIN,SMT, SHRS, WTAN. regards TJ

Sid_Fridge 09 Nov 2018

Sale of Alliance Trust Savings Hi TJ - Out of curiosity can I ask what your seven ITs are?

devonplay 09 Nov 2018

Sale of Alliance Trust Savings trader_jack: Facebook, Twitter I don’t use either of them Jack. I was shocked the other day when I read the average 13 yr old will have 1000 pictures of them posted by their parents by that age. I’m not sure it’s a good thing at all! No, I’m certain it’s bad thing. I do use social media. I have accounts on Diaspora, Gab & have pre-registered for Open-Book and Mastodon. Diaspora, I like the ethos and idea of "meshed’ computing and networks being provided by not-for-profits and individuals. It’s very international in flavour. Can be robust and “out there”. Gab, frankly has a terrible reputation and has lots of terrible people, but I prefer to see what they have to say than just bury my head. I find little I can agree with on it. It’s certainly an experience. Not one I would encourage. You see the occasional interesting post or article. And more than occasional expressions of hatred. Open-Book, launches in early 2019, will be funded by donation, grants and commerce. It’s aims are privacy driven and won’t rely on “selling user information”. The guy behind much of the cryptography we use today, even when we don’t see it, if involved. I think people are thinking more and more about privacy in a digital world and that’s a good thing. I hope Open-Book is the Facebook killer, it’s certainly looks like it will put users more in the driving seat. I do use Twitter, just for research and news, and without an account. Mastodon is like twitter, but very “trendy”, one for the cool kids Lol.

trader_jack 09 Nov 2018

Sale of Alliance Trust Savings Hi again Devonplay, Thanks for your comments, regarding ii I think that it might be somwhat reassuring that you “don’t find them that bad!” I suppose it is the thought of change plus any “silly moments” regarding the transfer across of accounts under the new MIFID II rules. A step into the unknown, I guess. These days I just have my own portfolio plus 4 JISA’s that I control for my grandchildren and most of all it is them that concerns me more. I seldom trade these days. About sx months ago I sold out of almost every company stock that I held and invested the proceeds into 7 investment trusts. My grandchildren have a sum of money invested into their JISA’s by myself on a monthly basis by direct debit. All dividends are automatically reinvested 48 hours after they hit the accounts for all of us. Very few of us like change and the older we get we like change even less. I struggle with mobile phones so will not use one unless there is an emergency. I do not understand why so many people seem to be reliant on Facebook, Twitter and all these social media thingies, I have always said that they should not be trusted and that something disastrous is likely to happen and they will be found to be the cause of it. I sincerely hope that such a thing does not occur, of course, as it will almost certainly have tragic consequences. I also prefer “hard copy” newspapers to having to read them on-line. But, then again, I put most things down to the fact that I will probably be pushing up daisies sooner that most on these boards. Kind regards TJ

devonplay 09 Nov 2018

Sale of Alliance Trust Savings Hi meme, no I’ve been a client, site user for the last 20 years, although I’m also have Alliance Trust in my portfolio. Hope you find a “home” for investments. DL

mememe 09 Nov 2018

Sale of Alliance Trust Savings @devonplay, that’s good to know. Did the changes affect you adversely in any major way? I find the News section on the revamped site quite useful. I’ll most likely set up an account with ii today more to spread the risk . Just wish their FX charges weren’t so high.

devonplay 08 Nov 2018

Sale of Alliance Trust Savings Hi Jack, I don’t find them that bad. Once the overall platform changes has settled down it was very much business as usual. They aren’t my only broker, but there’s no really bad experience I’ve had with them, excepting the recent changes. Not sure, I doubt it will have much overall effect. For the larger players, II and Hargreaves who can offer inducements to move, it should strengthen their positions. The issue will come when there’s very little choice. DL

trader_jack 08 Nov 2018

Sale of Alliance Trust Savings Hi Devonplay, FCA plans to scrap exit fees, I wonder how that will play out with investors? I am dreading ATS switch to ii given the bad revies that ii always seems to attract on this website and other sites also. If they are as bad as I fear then I will have to try and find another home for my investments and those of my grandchildren and I will almost certainly have to go through all the nonsense created by MIFID II. At least with ATS everything was cleared up within a couple of weeks and two or three letters. It is one thing the City watchdog banning exit fees the question will be how will ii and others seek to recover the profits they made from exit fees. Probably their dealing and custodial fees will rise to counteract the inevitable loss in profits. Kind regards TJ

devonplay 08 Nov 2018

Sale of Alliance Trust Savings This was the news that caught my eye this week: Interactive Investor scraps exit fees for its DIY investors with immediate effect ahead of FCA plans to ban them II customers are now be able to transfer out of Isa and Sipp accounts at no cost The move comes after the city watchdog mooted a ban on exit fees in July The firm also launched a cashback scheme to ease the cost of moving to ii

trader_jack 08 Nov 2018

Sale of Alliance Trust Savings I have just received an e-mail from Alliance Trust outlining the “benefits” to customers and to shareholders of Alliance Trust savings to ii. I may be getting dimmer in my dotage and, perhaps, my understanding of today’s use of English is not what it should be but one statement made by Alliance Trust just goes to show the rubbish that is spouted when it suits! “The portfolio, which combines the best ideas of eight world class stock pickers into one portfolio, has made an encouraging start, outperforming the MSCI All Country World Index by 1.7% gross of fees since inception in April 2017, through to the end of September.” Outperforming by 1.7% GROSS of fees. Surely the correct number to highlight should be NETT of fees or am I just totally out of touch with reality? Hopefully the regulators will shoot this down in due course. Trader Jack, unimpressed with this scenario.

Global IT man 30 Apr 2018

A more upbeat assessment 'Whatinvestment' provides a more upbeat assessment of ATST, slightly bizarrely under a recent article about alternative asset classeswww.whatinvestment.co.uk/what-are-the-alternative-asset-classes-2613887/The Telegraph may continue to tip Witan but (IMHO) ATST still looks a better bet than its closest competitor due to lower costs (I don't like performance fees!) and wider discount.

trader jack 21 Apr 2018

Daily Telegraph today... Alliance Trust managers on losing £24m on their fund shop and why they're not selling yet Amazon is one of Alliance Trust's biggest holdings Credit: Jane Barlow/PA • Laura Suter 20 April 2018 • 9:48am Alliance Trust launched 130 years ago, but has undergone a total transformation in the past year.The trust sold off the asset management business it owned (which also ran the fund’s money), its chairman and chief executive left, and it appointed eight fund managers to run the portfolio. The changes came after “activist” investor Elliott Advisors built up a large stake in the fund and publicly demanded change to turn around performance at the ailing trust. The new fund managers – selected by David Shapiro of investment consultant Willis Towers Watson – each run a concentrated portfolio of their “best ideas”, investing in around 20 stocks.Trust chairman Lord Robert Smith of Kelvin and Mr Shapiro sat down with Telegraph Money to talk about how the first year has gone.How has the first year of the new portfolio management been?Lord Smith: This has been quite a year. We’ve gone completely back to our roots. Performance has been good; we said we’d target 2 percentage points above the index and we have done that. We’ve increased the dividend by 3pc, the 51st year of increased dividends – that’s something we’re committed to. How do you pick managers? David Shapiro: When we pick managers we want them all to be specialists in different areas. There are 187 stocks in the trust, and the most overlap we allow is two stocks being held by different managers. They are a mix of global managers – some are based abroad like Bill Kanko at Black Creek, which doesn’t have a UK presence.Even where it’s a manager available in the UK, like Hugh Sergeant at River and Mercantile, this is the only way you can get his 20-stock portfolio. LS: Our investors could not get these managers directly. This is unique.How do you decide how much each manager is allocated?DS: It’s not an even split – it’s a bit like picking your favourite children, it’s very, very difficult. We don’t know whose style will be in favour in any month, so instead of giving equal amounts of money, we give them an equal amount of risk. If a portfolio is more volatile we give them slightly less money, even though we love them just as much. When we get money into the fund or are shrinking, we take away money from the best performing manager and give it to the worst performing manager. The discount reached 13pc. How did you reduce it? LS: There was quite a large discount two years ago. It now hovers around 5pc and we’re pretty comfortable with that.We will manage the discount around that level. I’d like to think that once people see the first year of performance, they will want to invest, and if we get to a small premium we may issue more shares and grow the trust. Alliance Trust has been around for 130 years Credit: The Alliance Trust archive With many underlying managers, does the trust cost more?LS: We have said the management fee won’t go above 0.65pc and it’s currently 0.62pc. DS: That covers everything. The nearest comparable for a multi-manager fund is Witan, which is 0.75pc plus whatever performance fees they’re paying their managers. We can get the underlying managers more cheaply, as they see this as long-term money and value the relationship with us. You still own the investment shop business Alliance Trust Savings – how has that performed?LS: We have had complaints about the platform. There have been performance issues. This year the board decided it wasn’t as valuable as we thought, so we have taken a write down [the trust cut its valuation of ATS from £61.5m to £38m].Because of the performance issues they put a lot of extra people on it to make sure the performance improved, but in doing that they ran up quite a lot of costs, so they will show a loss this year. There is no sale process at the moment. Do you both hav

trader jack 19 Apr 2018

Questor today Questor is having his / her normal dig at Alliance again today. Whatever the underlying reason for this Questor seems unable / unwilling to give Alliance any half decent publicity.As an example what really got to me this morning or is there something I am not understanding? "The change in management has attracted other costs. Each time a fund buys or sells a share or other asset there are associated fees – wholesale changes such as those undertaken by the trust come with a price tag."Any share purchase / sale attracts dealing costs even for the big boys and then there is always the government stamp duty on purchase so why pray does Questor have pint out the ble eding obviou?Here is what Questor's article ( I hope that I am not breaking any laws by copying & pasting this!!):""It’s not often a trust that has been around for 130 years is judged just on one year’s performance, but that is the case with Alliance Trust.The £2.4bn investment trust underwent an overhaul a year ago, selling the fund management business it owned, which also ran the trust’s portfolio, and moving to a multi-manager model run by consulting giant Willis Towers Watson.Regular readers will be aware of the high-profile problems the trust faced after activist investor Elliott Advisors took a large stake and publicly petitioned for change.The move resulted in the chief executive and chairman departing, the sale of the asset management arm to Liontrust and an about turn in strategy.The trust now allocates money to eight fund managers, investing in global stock markets. Gone are the fixed income and more esoteric holdings of the past.This month marks the first anniversary of the trust’s new direction, so how has it gone?It has met its target of outperforming the MSCI All Country World Index by two percentage points a year, returning 4.9pc on a “net asset value” basis. Yet the share price return lagged, at 3.9pc, because of a lingering discount.The discount has also narrowed – it was 13pc at the peak of the conflict with Elliott, and is currently 5.6pc, in line with its 12-month average. The board says it is happy with this level.The board has carried out a large swathe of share buybacks in the past year and also negotiated with Elliott to buy back all of its shares, leading to a further shrinking in the trust’s size – from £3.1bn a year ago to £2.4bn.This is progress, but other obstacles remain. The trust kept hold of Alliance Trust Savings, the investment shop business. In the past year, the platform has continued to struggle to integrate its acquisition of rival Stocktrade and undertook a costly relocation.Lord Smith of Kelvin, chairman of the trust, did not rule out a sale of the business, but said “there is no sale process in place at the moment”.“It is only just over 1pc of assets of the trust, but it matters, and I want these problems solved, and they will be,” he added.Alliance Trust Savings will make a loss this year, and the trust slashed the value of its 100pc holding of ATS from£61.5m to £38m.The sale of the asset management business to Liontrust was more successful, handing the trust £10m more than the £25m projected.The change in management has attracted other costs. Each time a fund buys or sells a share or other asset there are associated fees – wholesale changes such as those undertaken by the trust come with a price tag.Existing investors would have paid an additional 0.18pc as a result. That is not an insignificant amount when you consider the trust has imposed a 0.65pc cap on charges.Alan Brierley, of broker Canaccord Genuity, said that the trust has had a “highly encouraging start” and also believes the current discount is due to historical issues with the trust rather than fears over performance.A year ago Questor said it was too soon to judge whether the portfolio changes would be successful and the savings arm was a distraction. Instead we tipped rival Witan, which has been running a sim

trader jack 06 Oct 2017

Re: Onward & upward Good morning IT ManYes, onward and upward.I have decided that I have not been too clever regarding ATST. When it was announced that they were buying out the whole of Elliott Brothers holdings I had the feeling that the share price would suffer as they would have to sell other holdings to fund the purchase.I sold some of my own holdings (to maximise my CGT for the year) and those of my 4 grandchildren in both JISA's and First Steps Accounts. The average price we managed to obtain was in the low 670's. The funds were reinvested elsewhere but any resulting gains have come nowehere near to that achieved by ATST over the last 6/8 months.I first invested in ATST in 1990 and with the dividend reinvestment had seen my original investment rise tenfold over the intervening years and those of my grandchildren double / treble since they were taken out in the late 2000'sI have now decided that my reading of the markets is not as good as I like to think and if ATST dips back down to the low 700/690's in the coming months I am thinking to reverse the trades made in February and reinvest in ATST.Ah well such is life!Kind regardsTJ