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Its Not Harry

Comment and opinion for retail investors in the UK

Tech, pharma, innovations or what? (m)

21st April 2020 by Mark Potter Leave a Comment

I guess many readers will be wondering what they are going to buy when they venture back into markets. I have been spending time researching ‘obvious’ options.

My long standing belief in having some a portfolio exposed to what I call themes takes on board the modern alternatives to what is called ‘modern portfolio theory’ which is not modern at all, being an idea that become popular about the time I was born! The more recent academic thinking has focused on behavioural finance and ‘factor’ investing. As some of the factors that go into the models of the academics who favour the latter approach are things like momentum, there is an overlap.

The basic idea is that one invests in companies whose share price will likely rise because either (a) the business of the company is in something that is newly necessary or desirable (eg electric cars, streaming video), or (b) those sort of companies are likely to do better than another sort of companies (eg small companies grow faster than big companies) or (c) the majority of investors believe (a) or (b) or both!

That is an over simplification of what is in any case a pretty broad idea with different variants promoted by assorted academics with their own wealth management side-lines.

If we accept the general idea, at the moment we ought to be looking at technology and pharmaceutical/biotech funds and maybe some funds that focus on innovation in general, as the latter may invest in both of the former. So that is what I have been doing with a view to getting my subscribers headed off in an interesting direction! And of course finding funds to buy myself!

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Filed Under: Asset Allocation, Funds

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