Do you know of a way to monitor (and set alerts) on the discount / premioum of ITs?

Except for manually checking of course

I don't.

I appear to have rather badly missed the bottom here in deploying what spare cash I had which is a bit annoying. At the time of writing its trading at 970p or so, which is rather surprising given that NAV on Thursday 4th was 1146.71p, and the NASDAQ was up 1.5 points on the Friday.

Who exactly is selling at 970p I wonder. I imagine fair weather Robinhood types who buy at the top and sell at the bottom.

You know we are in real silly season when SMT is down 4.5% and KPC - another BG trust with a similar type of approach is up 2%.

EWI has lost 30% of its value in 3 trading days!

Terry Smith provides good clarity on their investment thesis whether this is valid in this low interest environment is totally another issue, totally missed on AAPL and AMZN

We have had low interest rates for over 10 years, so longer than Fundsmith has been running, he has turned £1000 into £5330 over that time.

APPL in Terry's view a fashion company & AMZN has returns that are far too low so they don't feature in the investable universe. If AMZN spins off the cloud business it would be in the investable universe as it satisfies his requirements. There is no point in having a very strict criteria & then not sticking to it.

You can back test Fundsmith to 4/12/03 when he started the strategy with Tullet Prebon pension. £1000 became £12841 at midday yesterday. It will be higher today. (£13,234 to 31/12/20) so a 13 fold increase in 17 years or around 16.3% compound which matches the 40 long term year back test Terry did in 2010 at around 16%. Remember inflation was much higher in 1970 so the performance as been stronger v inflation with low interest rates.

The constant arguments about stocks, cryptos, gold, etc. are basically like arguing about religions to be honest.

There is no wrong or right in the World of speculation and investment. There's no glory in being more "intellectually correct" than others. The only reward we strive for is making more money.

To that end, crypto speculators have clearly done very well in the last years.

It doesn't change the fact that investors aim to instead own productive assets which really have an intrinsic value, by turning capital into sustainable cash flows. This act of turning money into more money is a feature of only productive assets (of which there are many different levels of quality and cyclicality..!).

The reason that investors who follow an approach which aims to buy high quality businesses, or buy businesses that are below their intrinsic value (or both), is that this is a method that has worked and will likely continue to work, for an extremely long time. It works because it makes sense. Good businesses create wealth.

Comparing owning a business to speculating on cryptos (or any other non-productive asset) doesn't make sense. Stock investment also has some element of speculation. I like to seperate the "investment" element (book value, highly likely minimum cash flows) and the "speculation element" (future growth of cash flows, other unknowns) of businesses when investing. Some businesses, depending on their price, can be highly speculative.

Yeah, they missed Tesla, Gamestop and Bitcoin too! What a bunch of amateurs!

I would tend to agree regarding the stocks that they have intrinsic value and genuine investment in businesses that create wealth which is a sensible way of multiplying money.

However, when one looks at Gamestock valuation and short-selling practices, there’s no fair play in it and cryptocurrencies look like darling sunshines in comparison.

Nobody keeps you from shorting, assuming you qualify. However an account that allows shorting comes with strings attached.

Put options may be the better alternative.

At hugely below todays price, can't think they will be cheap.

Just a generic comment on how to go short if that is what one wants to play. I have no opinion on Gamestop (other than WTF) or any other individual stock here.

I have gained some money with a put on Tesla lately and lost money with puts on the S&P last autumn. Both were esstentially some sort of a hedge to the overall portfolio.

You borrow someones stock & sell it in the market. You pay the person a fee & agree to repurchase the shares on a certain date. Potential loss unlimited as people will have found out.

Or I can buy at put option (at a premium of course) which in the worst case expires at value zero.

Thanks. May I ask where you found the data?

The return in CHF would be 12.3% compound. Over such a long period this is amazing. It and reassures me in my investment choice

( £1000 and GBPCHF 2.2226 on 4/12/03; £12,841 and GBPCHF 1.29102 on 10/03/21)


FS strategy is to invest in businesses which are already generating above market Return on Capital Employed (ROCE). He bets on the horses that have already won. By definition he will miss out on horses that haven't yet won and don't yet have above market ROCE, but that have the potential to win in the future.

This hints at why FS has been able to beat the market whilst efficient market theory suggests it's not possible. The theory would say other investors should copy his approach and eliminate the possibility to deliver market beating returns. In a recent interview he said that Warren Buffet published the same strategy in 1979 so this not a new idea.

The limitation is that humans seem to wired to chase higher returns and speculate on sexy growth stocks. Perhaps similar to why we get addicted to casinos even when we know the odds are stacked against us...

Fundsmith published Tullet Prebon info showing growth from 4/12/03 to 31/12/12.
I used the notional value of £1000 on 4/12/03 which became £3117.76 on 31/12/12
That would have purchased 2409.21 T class Accumulation units in Fundsmith on 31/12/12, those units can be valued on any day going forward or past based on prices
Todays price £5.4315 so value would be £13,085.62

Correct. The point is that I find more risky shorting any stock than e.g. investing in crypto’s. Both are high speculations on eminent assets future.

You can only lose 100% in crypto unless geared somehow. Try shorting Crypto if you like to wear brown underwear

No need to short cryptos and brown pants in process as they are all going up lately

Did you just mention the words "assets" and "crypto" in one sentence?

(I know, two sentences)

Only there’s no such definition in lexicon of conservative EU markets. However, progressive New World economies can spot the movers and shakers