badnews
24 Jun 2016
Re: Sound Long Term Hold And IAPD up nearly 5% today??? Furthermore, FTSE 100 closing at circa 6185, so nowhere near the pre-Brexit lows. The BBC talks about a rout. Anyone seen where it is???
TwoSporrans
24 Jun 2016
Re: Sound Long Term Hold The Day UK leaves EU.....and HFEL is looking like its up over 2% on the day.Well how about that.Put it down the the £ crumbling; Asian shares sold off pretty hard today.Not half as much as in Europe/UK though.This is only the start of interesting times though.TS
BeaglePup
10 Jun 2016
Re: Sound Long Term Hold I totally agree, it's a trust I'm gradually adding to each month in my SIPP.
Greyinvestor
27 Apr 2016
Apologies Sorry, you are quite right about the divi. For some reason HFEL increases the dividend in August, part way through the year. So the fourth quarterly divi of 4.9p has just been declared, versus 4.7p last year, a 4% increase.I stand corrected.
WarrenGemini
26 Apr 2016
Re: decent results I think the dividend has increased rather than being flat if you compare it to the same period a year before.WarrenGemini
Greyinvestor
26 Apr 2016
decent results I'm happy to keep holding these. The divi is flat v last year but the income to the fund is rising fast, which bodes well for the safety of the dividend. The fall in sterling has helped enormously, as i expected, but it may now be reversed a bit. Investment performance has been fine. The discount is 2%, which is basically neutral.
TwoSporrans
23 Feb 2016
Currency Boost + Re-weighting These BREXIT fears are boosting Sterling prices of Asian funds like HFEL as the £ has crumbled of late, even against most Asian currencies.Today's/yesterday's rises in Asian funds were against a backdrop of falls in most share indices; priced in local currencies that is.Latest national weightings: Australia 21.0%China 15.8%South Korea 15.0%Singapore 9.4%Taiwan 9.3%Hong Kong 8.9%India 8.5%Thailand 3.0%Indonesia 2.7%New Zealand 2.3%So, exposure to each of China, Hong-Kong and Taiwan chiseled down by 2 to 3%.Singapore the biggest gainer, followed by S. Korea.Japan seems to have been deserted but sum of above is about 96%, so maybe not.Whatever, seems like M. Kerley has sold off some Chinese etc holdings on the recent rises and de-risked HFEL a tad thereby.HFEL discount been around 4 to 5 % the past few days; good reason to buy on dips.At 270p, the divi. yield is [4*4.9p= 19.6p] 7.26%.Maybe,if the £ stays low or goes lower, the dividend payout will rise from 4.9p/qtr, even if the income into the fund remains static.TS
Vosene
22 Jan 2016
Re: The debt market And if they don't your next car will be a Reliant(boom tish)
rugosaplants
22 Jan 2016
Re: The debt market Since you obviously like ITs, take a look at Smaller Companies Div Trst (SDV). My next car is reliant upon this trust doing well, as it has over the last couple of years.
Greyinvestor
22 Jan 2016
Re: The debt market Yes, a pretty sobering article. I hadn't realised how much debt has been taken on in the whole of S E Asia.Re gilts, yes they can be run to maturity. But then what? If the government needs the money, you have to issue new gilts or print the equivalent extra money. The BoE has bought up most of the short term gilts so at some point it has to issue more, or let inflation rip. It's why some people have said 'just expand the balance sheet ie keep buying the new gilts as they are issued'. But at some point that must create inflation. The FED is already getting uncomfortable about a QE exit. They don't know how to do it without huge after effects.As you suggest, gilt auctions can fail or nearly fail for all sorts of reasons. Maybe wealth funds are running out of money to waste on low yielding instruments.....I'd like to be buying UK smaller companies, but my track record with them is mediocre and in my view they are highly valued at present. The struggle to find decent yield goes on.....
TwoSporrans
22 Jan 2016
Re: The debt market You make a good point about currency depreciation risk GI; think that is generally the main concern of investors regarding emerging markets [and commodities led ones too] in the SHORT-MEDIUM term.Much of the depreciation will be driven by capital flight; some of which will be reversal of monies generated by developed markets QE as the recipients [banks in first instance] saw better investing opportunities in emerging markets than in their own moribund and debt shackled ones, back in the day when those particular bond purchases were made.Now there may either be a flight to [perceived] safety or it's a case of selling [good] assets to pay off pressing liabilities or bolster falling cash [capital] balances.The biggest LONG term EM concern [and very much regards China - SEE LAST PART OF THIS MISSIVE] is generally the combination of falling growth with rising debts.Clearly though, Korea is not Brazil; it's daft to treat all these diverse economies the same.This growth-debt concern leads me on to your comment:"the Bank of England has got to reissue a tidal wave of gilts if it ever wants to reverse QE"QE taxes my wee brain but I think it is quite in order for the BOE to simply let the Gilts it holds expire, without the Treasury having to pay them the face capital due on maturity/redemption.When the QE pump was in full operation, I think the overriding concern was the INFLATIONARY risk - down the road - of all the cash injected into the British, American, Japanese and [latterly] European economies.A $Trillion of QE cash would [and has] sire I'd hazard over $10Trillion of loaned credit when all the knock on leverage unfurled.I guess this contributed a lot to why the governments have changed laws since 2007 [Basel 3 etc] to make banks hold a lot more capital [lower leverage] than back in 2007-8.Whatever, we now live in DEFLATIONARY times, so, although the fears about leveraged debt, loan defaults and hence systemic bank failures remain, QE is still actually on the increase in Europe [Draghi just cued a March 2016 escalation?] and full blast in Japan because credit contraction generally in these economies is merely being 'compensated for' by the QE.One thing the BOE got very right was that over the decades prior to 2007 it issued a shed load of Long dated gilts. I haven't checked recently, but a few years back the average maturity of these gilts was 14 years. Across Europe, the average was around 6 years and in the USA only 4 years.That must have taken the pressure off the UK government need to renew a ton of debt over the years since the 2007-8 credit crash.Which makes the failure of that recent gilt auction you mentioned all the more noteworthy.Maybe it's just that money is generally tight in January; corporate budgets in process of being released? Isn't that why there's a dearth of, e.g. share buy-backs in January; hence the volatility of share price movements increases in thin trading.Anyway, and finally, a comment on Chinese debt and especially Debt:GDP ratios, to place in meaningful context:Until quite recently, China's debt:GDP ratios were modest; smaller than the developed world and elsewhere, despite it's stellar GDP growth.Think that in terms of Central government and household debt, this remains true, though they have risen a fair bit.The big concern is the corporate debt and specifically all those State Operated Enterprises which are concentrated in the very sectors that growth has hit the buffers due to massive over investment/capacity in heavy industry and construction.Then again, the state tends to just write off most of its bad loans to SOEs.At end of the day, they keep up full employment and the problem of overproduction is often exported: the Chinese sell [dump] goods at below cost overseas and maintain revenues and trade surplus reserves; plus they keep handle on social stability.Just all the steel makers, fabricators etc in somewhere like Blighty go bankrupt; thei
Greyinvestor
22 Jan 2016
Re: The debt market Yes, volumes are thin and on Thursday prices were simply bizarre. I bought some CLIG shares at a bonkers price which then rose 9% in ten minutes (i've still got them). I've literally never seen such odd movements. I tried to buy a couple of other small company stocks but couldn't, at the prices quoted. I suspect that there was virtually no liquidity in smaller companies, and even with big companies deals of £25k were swinging the price.I have no explanation, it could be low liquidity, it could be programme trading, it could be market makers trousering a few bob. Or maybe it's young traders and investors who have never seen a decent market fall. To my mind it wasn't even a very big day.So even at 60+ I need to learn new skills. I suspect that you should only trade 'fill or kill' in a really volatile market.HFEL is my largest holding and stays that way, despite a poor five year performance. AAIF is now my second largest holding.
rugosaplants
22 Jan 2016
Re: The debt market HFEL is a wise place to be. There has been the usual over-reaction to some bad news (too many shares were sold in panic), and equally there is likely to be an overreaction upwards. There is plenty of growth potential still in HFEL, even without your argument about debt depressing income. I go along with the points you make. I am holding for now, but, were I not amply in HFEL, I would be buying.On a general point, have you noticed what small trading volumes there have been whilst all these price swings were taking place? What does that tell us?
Greyinvestor
22 Jan 2016
The debt market That's a good post re Unilever.To my mind the big market risk is the debt market. Did you see that the latest UK gilt auction nearly failed? And the Bank of England has got to reissue a tidal wave of gilts if it ever wants to reverse QE. The effect will be a jump in interest rates which will cripple government spending and the economy, when it happens. It doesn't need to be an especially large jump to have a big effect. It's why rates will be kept low for as long as possible.The corporate debt market has also been a bottomless pit for share buy backs and oil exploration in the USA. It too is showing signs of strain.So I think that it's wise to invest in less indebted regions, and less indebted companies. Also to invest in high divi payers which are bond substitutes.My money is on S E Asia and high divi paying companies with reasonable balance sheets.I am concerned about the HFEL divi. In local currency terms I'm sure that it's fine, but in sterling terms it may be a big problem, because I believe that sterling has strengthened against S E Asia, for now. In the long term I think sterling will weaken.
TwoSporrans
19 Jan 2016
The Emerging Consumer Unilever results just in; not that I hold any.Interesting for insight into general consumer demand globally.The very mundane nature and enduring attributes of most of Unilever's products suggests they offer a good yardstick to gauge the health of general consumer demand.Cribbed from the FT:"Weakening emerging markets, in which Unilever makes 58 per cent of its sales, had hit the company hard in 2014. But sales in these regions recovered last year, rising 7.1 per cent, up from 5.7 per cent in 2014.There was no growth in developed regions, however. Mr Polman attributed this in part to a polarisation of the market and a squeezed middle class."When one contemplates the demise of Brazil and Russia and other oil/gas/metals production based economies, the Asian consumer is presumably considerably more flush than the average across emerging economies.Seems to me from what I'm gleaning from the results of reliable Blue Chip companies [as opposed to say, dubious Chinese statistics] that Asian consumer demand continues, not only to bear up but to be growing at a fair crack; for sure better than across developed economies.Hence, it comes as little surprise that the current equity sell off is not so much in Asia as last Summer's was.Yes, China remains a huge source of concerns; however methinks the financial media attributes way too much to these when offering explanations for the January sell off.More plausible to me, is that the realisation is finally sinking into the Investor majority-mindset that the developed economies, with governments shackled by debt since 2008, now find their central banks have run out of stimulus ammunition and nothing left to shoot come the next recession.Certainly brings out the risk aversion in me.Whatever, it's good to see HFEL with a 2 to 3% discount on it's NAV and let's hope the February [X-D 4th Feb.?] Dividend can be kept and covered OK at 4.9p/share.TS
