MDW1954 wrote:You've never really engaged with my (repeated) suggestions of looking at REITs etc, beyond saying that you owned BLND and (possibly) SGRO, and also a house.
Student accommodation, 'big box' warehouses, 'last mile' warehouses, wind farms, solar farms, doctors' surgeries, etc etc -- you don't own any of these, yet you're contemplating MONY, TEP, and similar companies with slim moats and few assets beyond their fickle customer databases?
I prefer solid assets.
MDW1954
TL;DR - haven't had the time, may look at REITs if I need to; HYP not suffering if I don't.
For a number of reasons, in no particular order:
1. We're overweight in REITs already (both BLND & SGRO combined).
2. I've got limited time.
3. In combination #1 & #2 means I've not looked at, and not needed to look at, REITs. Same as I've not looked at the Financials industry segment either, as I focused my recent HYP time/attention on securing further diversification, looking to prune out rump stocks, top-slice and top-up plans.
4. The HYP needs to perform, not excel. By approximate value I should be spending 90% of my current time sorting out pensions and 10% on direct investments, including the HYP. I.e. the HYP is "good enough for now", given its relative standing vs overall wealth.
5. With existing direct property investment, plus the REITs held in HYP, plus potentially adding house-builders to the HYP, and one or two stocks that may also depend on property/land values, plus pension investment choices, I think we're ok for 'solid assets'.
6. I've skimmed REITs this evening. LSE lists 49, of which 18 have market caps >£1bn. Three in the FTSE100. According to DividendData.co.uk only seven are over the current FTSE100 yield of 3.57%. They may be worthy of further research (but see #2, again).
7. I tend to review dividend histories in some detail, typically back to 2000 by trawling RNS. That's time consuming; probably about 30 minutes per stock for 'non-complex' histories and more if there's been rights issues, share splits or other corporate actions. I'll look at the senior leadership, how long in tenure, what's the dividend policy, has it changed, what's the cover, where's the balance sheet at. I didn't always do this but now find it useful to understand prospective investment.
8. I may look at adding further Financial and REIT industry stocks once I've done the rebalancing, as it's possible through transactions (including halving the SGRO holding which is currently 319% median holiding value) that will free up some headroom in those industry categories.