dazurtrader
02 May 2018
Re: Big question mark here .... Tesla I agree Sage. There was an article in last week's Money Week which advised shorting Tesla. Not just their current production problems but the fact that the major car manufacturers are fast catching up and will soon be offering all electric vehicles of quality.However SMT remains a core holding for me but due to its exposure to tech stocks this January I rebalanced by selling half and investing that in Monks IT. Over exposure to SMT may prove damaging when the crash occurs.
sage in the hills
02 May 2018
Re: Big question mark here .... Tesla Chip_Scashtin ......BUT this other £1.4billion fund has a SHORT, yes a SHORT on Tesla, in other words they believe that Tesla will continue to burn cash, not make enough profits even if it does manage to sell as many cars as the opposition one day, and the Tesla sp will fall massively.How will you explain that to your son ? ....Ilumina is a US pharmaceuticals biz.SAGE
Chip_Scashtin
02 May 2018
Re: Big question mark here .... Tesla 4.9% of SMT is in Tesla, 5th biggest holding. 9.9% in Amazon, top holding. Who th is Illumina? They are 4th. These guys are definitely not seeking to track any indexes.Not sure I would buy today, but I recommended SMT to my son and no regrets.
sage in the hills
01 May 2018
Big question mark here .... Tesla SMT has a massive Tesla position .......This other fund has a massive SHORT on Tesla .......Who is right ? .....who will win ? .....£1.4bn fund manager: 'I've bet against Tesla – the story doesn't match the reality' 19 Tesla roadster launchTesla is burning through cash at a rapid rate CREDIT: TESLA/REUTERS James Connington 1 MAY 2018 • 1
9PMInvestors looking to add protection to their portfolios amid stock market volatility face a difficult choice.Bonds, the traditional safe haven asset, face a number of risks after three decades of rising prices.Absolute return funds, which aim to deliver a positive return regardless of market conditions, provide one option.The £1.4bn Jupiter Absolute Return fund, managed by James Clunie since 2013, aims to deliver a positive return over any three year period.The fund makes heavy use of so-called “short selling” – betting against individual stocks.Telegraph Money spoke to Mr Clunie about what makes him short a stock, when his fund will perform well, and why he doesn’t buy into the Tesla hype.What’s in the portfolio?The portfolio has around 40pc in global shares, 42pc in shorts against global shares – mostly in America – and assets such as gold to make the fund more robust. Those weightings change gradually over time.If you’re an active manager you have to have an edge, otherwise there’s no real purpose in existing – shorting stocks is our edge. It has been my research focus for 15 years.There’s evidence that there are information signals that can be identified to gain an edge when choosing companies to short. We’ve read all, and written a number of, the academic papers on the topic.We are patient, waiting to short a stock until others do too, and accept our losses if there’s news that contradicts our thinking.If others short the company you want to bet against, they have seen what you see, and together you are more likely to succeed against a mass of optimistic buyers.How do you pick stocks? For both picking stocks to invest in and bet against, there are multiple stages.First, we screen accounting data, pricing data and other information on companies, and plug that data into formulae, which ranks stocks from top to bottom.Then, we look at the market value and determine if the cashflow a company needs to sustain that share price can realistically be attained.We then look at factors such as directors buying shares, short sellers building positions, and activist investor.Where companies score favourably in all these areas, we invest a small amount in to start with.If companies score badly in all these areas, we start to bet against it. We then invest more, or abandon the idea, depending on news and whether it confirms our thinking.Right now, our biggest investment is in oil giant BP. People think it’s a rubbish company, but it has been disciplined with its spending, which will show up in its results. It should increase in price once people realise it’s not as bad as they thought.Our biggest short position is against electric car firm Tesla (see box, below), as the story isn’t backed up by fundamentals.When does the fund do well?Our fund has an inverse correlation to stock markets, which is the exact opposite of most funds.If share prices fall, either due to rising interest rates or an economic recession, we expect the fund to go up. If the market fell 20pc, we’d expect to be up 4pc.The biggest risk to the fund is that share prices keep going up. We don’t like steady markets where shares go up in a straight line, led by stocks that have already gone up a lot.We hated 2013 to 2014, and last year, when markets rose strongly. We just hunker down and try to survive those periods. Performance was flat in 2013 to 2014, and the fund lost around 3pc in 2017.But the insurance the fund offers hasn’t come at a big price – the fund is up 10pc over three years, and 16pc over five y
trader jack
24 Apr 2018
Re: whither SMT now? Hello Freedom-thirty5,Yes I saw that.Makes my modest investment look quite good. Let's hope that the upward trend continues. We should get to hear about next dividend soon I think.Kind regardsTJ
freedom-thirty5
24 Apr 2018
Re: whither SMT now? Allotment of Shares from Treasury> On 23 April 2018, owing to demand in the market, the Company announces the issuance of 1,150,000 Ordinary Shares of 5p each fully paid from Treasury. Following the issuance there will be 1,398,313,209 Ordinary Shares in issue (excluding the remaining 23,417,671 shares held in Treasury). These shares were issued for cash on 23 April 2018 at a price of 463.00p per share and at a premium to the prevailing net asset value.[link]
trader jack
04 Apr 2018
Re: whither SMT now? I am sorry but I feel that the recent drop is all my fault!!I should have known better but I bought in last week at 442p per share. Luck / good fortune seems seldom to be on my side. I thought that this looked an exciting home for my ISA ( two years accumulated ISA's in fact.)Ah well, I can't take it with me as they say so I just hope that my investment can build over the next few years so as my grandchildren might reap the benefit.If you have been looking at the Dow over the last few days you have to keep your eyes open all the time, One blink and it moves 100 points or so. Ou American cousins don't do steady, one tweet from the White House sends the whole market into a tailspin!Kind regards and good luck to all my new fellow investors.TJ
wildbuy
04 Apr 2018
Re: whither SMT now? I suspect that the answer is different depending upon the timescale that you are looking at. The headwinds against Tesla, Facebook, Amazon et al seem pretty strong at the moment, but in the medium to long term they may still turn out to be a good bet. The problems with longer timescales are that the number of unknowns multiply. For example- How will Tesla fare when the major players in the car and truck market increase their focus on electric vehicles? How will Tesla cope with high debt levels as interest rates rise? Will the tax take rise on Amazon? Will regulation push up Facebook's cost base? I suspect that the answer to all of these (and many other) questions will be largely negative. However, weighed against this are the positive unknowns of how many rabbits they are able to pull out of the hat.
tradingup
03 Apr 2018
whither SMT now? James Anderson has tied his flag to the FANG shares in recent years along with othercutting edge companies such as TESLA and similar high tech outfits.After a number of years of amazing growth and little or no critical comment on hisstrategy, the non stop upside seems to have ground to a halt.Some commentators think this is a temporary glitch in the never ending rise oftech stocks. Others are doubtful and cite the inevitability of regulation which willput a blanket on the spectacular growth we have seen from SMT in recent years.I'm still knocked out by the fact that SMT made it into the FTSE100.Will it still be there in 2020?
II Editor
21 Mar 2018
NEW ARTICLE: ISA season 2018: Investment trust tips for all ages "With the end of the tax year drawing near, the Association of Investment Companies (AIC) has collated investment company ISA recommendations from financial advisers for all ages.MillennialsDennis Hall, CEO and chartered financial planner at ..."[link]
Diotima
07 Mar 2018
Re: O/T MiFID 2 and investment trusts Well, I for one have found these KIIDs a revelation - at least the bit right at the end that tells you what the actual ongoing costs of the product are. Who knew, for instance, that RIT's costs are touching 4% instead of the 1.and-a-bit % that always appeared as their annual costs in all previous documentation and web info? If the changes are annoying that's the fault of XO and other brokers who haven't got their acts together. It surely can't be that difficult for them to set up a tick box or two on the trading page so you can say you've read the KIIDs. I suspect they have been dilatory in getting hold of them from investment houses or doing the necessary IT work to get them uploaded etc. Blaming the EU for our own shortcomings, what a novelty ......
freedom-thirty5
03 Feb 2018
Re: O/T MiFID 2 and investment trusts > Makes a bit of a mockery of the regulations. These regulations are a mockery themselves. The KID documents are simply awful, and potentially very misleading, and also encourage a short-term outlook. I understand what they were trying to do, but it just seems like a solution to a problem that didn’t exist, and a significant waste of time and resources for everyone affected.I see there's some sort of nonsense to be complied with for "complex instruments" now as well, so I have that joy to come at some point.
hanoiboy
02 Feb 2018
Re: O/T MiFID 2 and investment trusts Different brokers are handling KIDs in different ways.On HSDL, you have to tick on the KID document to download it and then click on a box to say you've read it. The HSDL system will not allow you to click on the "I have read it" box unless you initiate a download.Barclays also requires that you click on a box to say you've read the KID before you can initiate a trade. Some of the KIDs are missing that are relevant to me - MRCH (Merchants) and BRGE (Blackrock Greater European Emerging Markets) so you can sell but not buy. Barclays say they haven't been provided with the KIDs but they are on the IT's own web site so they're not being proactive to get it sorted out.There is an anomaly. The Barclays system will conduct an automatic divi reinvestment without having indicated you've read the KID (if one exists) and without a KID being in place for the "Buy" function if you want a new tranche. Makes a bit of a mockery of the regulations.
freedom-thirty5
02 Feb 2018
Re: O/T MiFID 2 and investment trusts I spoke to XO in the phone this morning afterI was informed by the web platform that I couldn't buy any SMT because I had not confirmed I had read the KID.The lady i spoke to unlocked it for me on the phone and then sent me the KID by email, which was absolute tosh and a total waste of my time to read.I am very disappointed that the EU has just placed an irritating barrier in the way of me investing in things I have researched and chosen. As far as I can tell, the only place I could actually get a copy of the wretched document was from X-O themselves, so obviously, no, I have not read the silly thing. Its pure nannying, and pretty much pointless too. In future, I am just going to say that I have read the KID, but I won't actually read it. I expect most will do the same.Back to practicalities, the lady I spoke to said that in future I can just send them an email with a list of tickers I have "read the KID" for, and they will tick the box for me so I can trade them in future. What a pointless charade.She also said that the devs are working on putting a tick box on the trading page where this requirement applies so you can just tick the box and get in with it, but they haven't got it in place yet.Good to know the EU is wasting so much of their and our time and money on pointless hoops for us to jump through that add absolutely zero value.Amusingly, this is what Scottish Mortgage thinks of this new KID nonsense:[link]
PIE-EATER
28 Dec 2017
Re: O/T MiFID 2 and investment trusts ThanksI think those are 2 different things.....I have just been sent one by Jarvis for complex instruments because of my holdings in 3UKS...a leveraged short tracker....so I can understand that, but has anyone ever even come across a KIID for an investment trust (I am not even sure they exist)PE
