Its Not Harry

Comment and opinion for retail investors in the UK

Markets

YAP – Snippets

by Leave a Comment

President Trump

I summarise below (next heading) the main points from a useful Morningstar webinar on the impact of the US election for European investors, presented ahead of the result but assuming a Trump win (it was from their Irish based European markets specialist).

I have been interested to see what the main UK and US media economics and finance commentators are already saying, relative to the factors I listed in the third, most speculative strategy review example I gave in my November Deep Dive.

You need to be logged in to view the rest of the content. Please . Not a Member? Join Us

YAP – (video worth watching) – a true guru of markets

by Leave a Comment

I came across the video referenced below this week. It tells an interesting story very concisely and it’s one that all investors would learn from.

You may think that I studied the career of Peter Lynch earlier in my life if you have become accustomed to my investment philosophy, which has valuation, being in the market for the long term and making personal decisions about how much you can commit to riskier assets at its core, but in truth all that is in the linked video was completely new to me!

I suspect that all experienced investors come to the same unavoidable conclusion that buying at the right price is the most important skill that an investor needs, and that there are long periods when the price can be right (both when it is moving up and moving down), but they rarely extend into the time when the mass media discovers the ‘opportunity’

Here is the link:

YAP – snippets

by Leave a Comment

To offer some practical support with the ideas outlined in the Deep Dive article series I started at the beginning of this month, I have decided to pass on to subscribers some condensed notes of the material I see in my own reading. Some of my news feeds are only available to those who can pre-register as financial services professionals, supplying some supporting data about their occupation, so I may get earlier or more specifically focused data that could have an impact on strategic investment themes.

I would also claim that I can more quickly add some qualitative interpretation and keep out most of the ‘noise’, a skill I wrote that everyone ought to try and develop.

[Read more…] about YAP – snippets

YAP – markets back on track?

by Leave a Comment

The market trend that I have previously called ‘benign’ was set back by a sharp but short correction in early August and what looks almost like an echo of that in early September. So far we have not had the same this month. In terms of global market indices, the low points of those dips look to be more or less in line with the trend in market lows for the last couple of years as does the current high valuation.

As we know the upward momentum is not evenly strong across the globe with much of it having come until quite recently from the so-called Mag 7 stocks, although in truth not all of the chosen 7 have done that well.

You need to be logged in to view the rest of the content. Please . Not a Member? Join Us

YAP – Proof of the pudding?

by Leave a Comment

Recent volatility in global stock markets has, as ever, attracted media attention, because it mainly involves sell-offs. I thought it would be useful to see how different types of assets, such as we may actually own, have performed since the first hint of nervousness at the start of August.

To do that I am going to use short term data, obviously. I need to remind readers that short term data is NEVER a useful indication of relative OR absolute future performance. It can also be down right misleading. The data I am using is over one month ending about now, so it starts AFTER the August sell off. Relative to that starting point performance it will look much better that if I had, for example, been able to use 6 week data.

My objective is only to observe the direction of returns from various funds during this period of nervousness, leading to exaggerated volatilty. So one month data is ideal, specifically for this objective.

Does diversification actually work is the sort of sell-off we have seen lately?

You need to be logged in to view the rest of the content. Please . Not a Member? Join Us

YAP – markets sell-off

by Leave a Comment

The sharp sell-off in global stock markets may end up being a very temporary event, but I thought subscribers might appreciate a comment before I leave for ‘riot-torn’ England. The latter picture of nationwide strife would be my conclusion based on the BBC news website, although not from others.

I am aware that the Japanese market has bounced back strongly this morning, but that is not enough news to form any conclusions about what will happen next in other markets.

What I can say is that the sell off we have seen has very little to do with fundamentals, except that tech stocks, notably those connected with AI, had become overvalued. That I have already warned about a few weeks back.

Have we just spotted a black swan? I don’t think so. More a question of the ducks taking off en masse at the shadow of what could be an eagle.

The only evidence that there is any sort of slowdown in the US economy is weaker numbers on employment and the strong numbers before were reported to be upsetting the Federal Reserve and keeping interest rates higher!

The weaker numbers may help the bank make a decision to lower interest rates sooner or even by more but predicting a global recession (which is what markets are said by some to be doing) from such limited data is plain foolish.

It fits rather well with my recent piece on behavioural finance that the FT suggests that markets are at risk of creating a self-fulfilling event by imaging a recession that has not yet happened. Nothing to fear except fear itself etc…..

The next few days will give us more idea of what the ongoing permanent market trend will be, but I see the macro climate as remaining generally benign. If anything, it just got better for fixed income. I hope readers already took profits from their high flying technology funds on the back of my previous observations.

Definitely not a time to panic but a good example of how markets that have run up strongly over months will correct in hours when there is a collective psychological meltdown. If you have a lot of profit on the table, you are very likely to rush to bank it at the slightest hint of bad news and the first to sell gets the best price, so get a move on! It’s just human nature.