Its Not Harry

Comment and opinion for retail investors in the UK

Education

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

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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:

Deep Dive – November 2024

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(a continuation of the October 2024 Deep Dive)

Stage 3 – What data do you want to focus on?

Is it difficult?

Writing this section has been a challenge for me and for some it may only be of limited use.  Perhaps each person will go about strategy review work in their own way, but I hope I can give you a few tools to use.

As I thought about what to suggest to help investors acquire and apply information that is freely available these days, a saying of my late mother came to mind.  A rather blunt lady, she was inclined to express frustration at we children not doing things right,  usually by pronouncing the phrase ‘oh, use your common sense!’.  I think maybe that was a well used expression of the 1960s.

I am not going to leave my advice at just that, but I don’t think one requires qualifications in economics, accountancy or investment portfolio theory to use relevant data to make good decisions. 

I have all those qualifications (of course, acquired ages ago!) and perhaps they occasionally give me an extra insight, but I think my personal methodology in moving to a new or updated viewpoint on investment markets (which readers have likely observed over the years) is based on my life experience working in the business sector (as have nearly all my readers) and a keen interest on what is going on in the world, which is so very often a cyclical pattern. 

What goes around comes around is a very useful cliché to keep in mind! For that reason, being old (or having plenty of experience) is a bonus!

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YAP – snippets

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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 – some gold with your toilet rolls, ma’am?

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I was interested to read that the US ‘big box’ retailer Costco has been selling silver and gold bars to its members and is planning to add platinum as an option. It sells with what is thought to be a very minimal ‘cut’ (said to be 2%) because its business model is based on the ‘warehouse club’ membership fees it collects.

When Costco secures for sale a supply of small gold bars, they sell out immediately. It is reported that they sell $200 million worth every month.

This model will likely be copied elsewhere and to me it is an interesting potential tailwind for the price, as we have in gold a commodity with a known limited supply and, aside from the jewelry and consumer electronics uses, not much of a history of mass market purchases in the West. I do recall the temporary fad for buying Krugerrands at 1oz when I was boy – my father showed me one. Sadly, he did not keep it because even since the turn of the millennium, gold prices have risen 800% or so.

Gold is of course a commodity in technical terms, but I was not aware that it had become a household commodity!

You can buy gold in the UK via a FinTech Mastercard debit card account from Glintpay if that interests you, at a lower cost. However, do not assume that I am recommending such an investment. Gold is a legitimate long-term asset to own, but you need to understand its specific characteristics and the associated risks, as ever.

YAP – markets back on track?

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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.

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YAP – useful resource

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As a tip to back up my article about strategic portfolio reviews and the need to stay aware of what is happening in global investment markets, I thought readers might like to know where I go for a very broad range of daily data, easily viewed. Here is the url:

Global Market Indices | International Markets | Markets Insider (businessinsider.com)

This is of course a vehicle for advertising as most media will be, and you should be careful if you choose to read any of the supporting material as it may not be very independent. That is not to say that I do not scan some of it from time to time and find it helpful in getting the ‘big picture’.