Its Not Harry

Comment and opinion for retail investors in the UK

Portfolios

YAP – sale of the century?

by Leave a Comment

I recently watched a webinar from Columbia Threadneedle, the main purpose of which was to promote their UK Equity Income skills, a market segment where the firm has always had a decent reputation with advisers. Columbia is the US based owner but Threadneedle has been around right back into my childhood when my father worked for the then privately owned insurer Eagle Star and Threadneedle was its investment management arm. It went through ownership by British American FS, Allied Dunbar and then Zurich before ending up with Columbia.

The webinar was presented by Jeremy Smith and Dominic Younger and a fair part of it explained their investment philosophy and process which is very much ‘bottom up’. They listed a number of holdings and I was broadly impressed, but this note is not about their fund.

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

YAP – new video

by Leave a Comment

I will publish a new informal ‘at the whiteboard’ style video talk at midday UK time today. There is a return to the Daly Telegraph Guide to Investing from the 1980s and some high-level guidance on the techniques of portfolio diversification.

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

YAP – Snippets

by Leave a Comment

Here are some of the most interesting points I gleaned from a Morningstar presentation last week, taking a look at prospects for European markets in the second quarter. Although the focus was Europe, the head of global equity strategy was on the call, so the macroeconomic content of the call was actually quite broad.

Naturally the message running through all the commentary was, stick of rock like, Trump’s tariffs. I actually thought it was quite bold of Morningstar (MS) to even offer a forward-looking commentary, and the European lead had to admit that he had needed to redo several of his charts in the days approaching the call, which was at the end of last week, and by today had already been overtaken to a certain extent by further vague prognostications from members of the US administration.

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

Deep Dive – January 2025

by Leave a Comment

Fixed Income – a refresher

This article is designed to satisfy a couple of subscriber requests to offer more core information about fixed income investing.

The asset class that comprises Gilts, Treasuries, Eurobonds, corporate bonds, elements of bank capital, assorted ‘notes’, private credit and the like has been an important investment opportunity for centuries but most beginner investors will, at best, have as their only acquired knowledge of the fixed income market some knowledge of National Savings Certificates.

I freely admit that it took me several years of day-to-day involvement in investment markets as an adviser to feel intuitively comfortable thinking about fixed income (henceforth interchangeably called ‘bonds’  as well, although bonds is a looser term).  That was the case even though I had formal training in corporate finance as a Chartered Secretary and had experience of over a decade working for a mortgage bank.  It’s not a subject that one can skim over and grasp.

I have procrastinated about writing this sort of article until now as even an introduction or refresher requires quite a lot of words.  I hope what follows is digestible and useful.

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