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Times are hard for value fund managers
Thursday 09 Apr 2020Fund manager Mark Barnett has been removed from investment trust Perpetual Income and Growth ( PLI ) . His strategy, picking under-priced stocks seemingly trading at less than their intrinsic value, has been out of favour for years, and the board at PLI cited prolonged underperformance in their...
Lindsell Train’s Japanese fund soars ahead
Thursday 09 Apr 2020Michael Lindsell, manager of the £455m Lindsell Train Japanese Equity Fund (0438418) , described his reaction at the outperformance of the fund last month as ‘flabbergasted’. The fund rallied 5.9% in yen terms in March while the benchmark Topix index fell 6%, opening up a 12% performance gap. After...
Scottish Investment Trust denies ‘style drift’
Thursday 09 Apr 2020Alasdair McKinnon, fund manager of Scottish Investment Trust ( SCIN ) , has denied that he has succumbed to ‘style drift’ after radically overhauling his portfolio, insisting the changes were in line with his contrarian stance. In last week’s Shares we suggested that the value investor had changed...
Market mood lifted by huge financial support but investors remain wary
Thursday 02 Apr 2020World stock markets staged a decent rally last week with major indices bolstered by huge financial stimulus packages. Most pertinently, a deal has been reached between President Trump’s administration and Congress on a $2trn fiscal support deal, equivalent to just under 10% of GDP, dwarfing the...
Why oil prices have plunged to 18-year lows
Thursday 02 Apr 2020Oil prices have plunged to 18-year lows of under $21 a barrel with over half of global demand wiped out amid the coronavirus pandemic, while in metals some clear winners and losers are starting to emerge. In the commodities world, oil appears to be hit hardest thanks to a huge drop-off in demand...
Housing market goes into coronavirus hibernation
Thursday 02 Apr 2020The housing market has become the latest casualty of the coronavirus epidemic as the Government lockdown snuffs out the nascent recovery which followed the Conservative election victory in December. Estate agents and surveyors had seen a sharp rebound in the number of house transactions across the...
Bill Ackman sets record straight after $2.6bn win
Thursday 02 Apr 2020Wall Street investor Bill Ackman has defended his 18 March appearance on CNBC , which drew criticism that he had deliberately scared people in order that his asset management firm Pershing Square could make money from the coronavirus crisis by betting against the market. Ackman says that rather...
Temple Bar dumps holdings after share price collapse
Thursday 02 Apr 2020Value-oriented investment trust Temple Bar ( TMPL ) has removed gearing – borrowing money to invest – after its share price more than halved since the coronavirus crisis began. Following a discussion between its board of directors and manager Alastair Mundy, the latter agreed to sell the defensive...
Byotrol steps up in the fight against coronavirus
Thursday 02 Apr 2020The third best performing share on the UK market this year is about to update investors on its role in helping to fight the coronavirus pandemic. Byotrol ( BYOT:AIM ) is helping to save lives by supplying its novel hand sanitiser to the NHS, with a proven ‘kill claim’ against coronavirus. Its...
Have capital preservation funds lived up to their name?
Thursday 02 Apr 2020Capital preservation funds have done a good job at protecting investors’ money during this year’s significant market sell-off, but they haven’t avoided losses entirely. In the three months to 24 March, the MSCI World index fell by 22.4% and the FTSE 100 declined by 33.7%. In comparison, eight out...