HYP Practical - Some Changes

[Arborbridge]

If only....


(I mean, you say you've decided against an HYP... fair enough, your choice!... but then why the need to involve yourself at all in discussions about a board dedicated to HYP investors! Why not move on! You've made your decision, other's have made theirs. Each inhabit their separate boards! Everyone happy)

Yes, what you've pointed out seems a complete mystery to me also. In the wider world one might call this "poking your nose into someone else's business" and would certainly be frowned upon.

Or alternatively "trying to make the world a better place", typically applauded. Which one of those somebody thinks it is will of course be conditioned by their own views.

OK, whatever - but I'm moving on!

[Gengulphus]

There isn't agreement on what form a benchmark should take. For a drawdown HYP there are two sources of value, namely the income withdrawn and the capital remaining. For an accumulating HYP there's the accumulated capital value after reinvestment. Or is this disputed because of the HYP mantra "capital doesn't matter"?

Yes, there's no agreement about what benchmark should be used, or even what form it should take (e.g. index, IT, inflation). Indeed, there isn't even agreement on whether to use a benchmark at all - some HYPers are perfectly happy if their HYP is simply fulfilling their needs, without feeling any need to compare against anything else. And as for "capital doesn't matter", there isn't any agreement on that either...

And as far as the HYP Practical guidance this thread is about is concerned, it's silent on benchmarks, capital and a number of other supposed HYP 'mantras' (e.g. "don't tinker" and "strategic ignorance") and details of the rules (e.g. it says that HYP shares "When bought, should reasonably be expected to sustain, and preferably grow their dividends in the future." without saying what form the reasons for that expectation should take). AFAIAA, this is deliberate, because the board is intended to cater for HYPers whose approaches vary on those things. Though discussing such differences should IMHO highly preferably be on an agree-to-differ basis, not a heated-argument one!

That isn't quite correct, and as both a moderator *and* the instigator of the removal of the posts in question, I am in a position to know.

The OP of the posts being discussed here felt that the following piece of guidance prevented them from being posted on HYP-P:

For the avoidance of doubt, the practicalities of taking a HYP approach DO NOT include making decisions about whether to use such an approach, nor decisions about whether to stop using one, the effectiveness and performance of HYP strategies versus other strategies, the desirability or otherwise of investment trusts as an alternative to HYP shares, nor discussions of other types of approaches.

I myself am not so sure that he is correct, but I am concerned that the guidelines as worded might be seen as suggesting that a HYP-CTY comparison is not appropriate for HYP-P.

I would be interested in your views on this.

I don't really see what you're saying is not quite correct about what I said. Enough HYPers have posted about benchmarks that I'm certain some HYPers use indices such as the FTSE100, FTSE AllShare or FTSE350 Higher Yield as their benchmark, some use ITs or baskets of ITs like CTY, some use inflation measures like CPI or RPI, some don't use benchmarks, so there isn't agreement on what form a benchmark should take or even whether to use one at all. I know that there isn't agreement about "capital doesn't matter" because some HYPers clearly do believe it and I don't (I'm of the "capital matters, but successfully looking after the income is an adequate way of looking after the capital, and far easier than directly attempting to look after the capital" school). I know that some HYPers believe firmly in "don't tinker" and others (including me) don't. Judging by the number of different ways in which people invoke "strategic ignorance", there isn't even agreement on what it is, let alone whether to use it or not. The HYP Practical guidance doesn't mention "capital", "benchmark", "ignorance" or any synonyms of them. I suppose that pedantically, "It is acknowledged that individual HYP investors may from time to time see the need to sell individual HYP stocks, ..." is not being entirely silent about tinkering, but whether "may" is supposed to mean "might" or "are allowed to", it implies that "might not" and "are allowed to choose not to" are also OK, so it's silent on the question of whether to tinker or not. It doesn't give any more details of the rule I quote, and while the rest of what it says may be disputable, it is clearly labelled as being the situation as far as I am aware or as being my opinion.

As far as the "posts being discussed here" are concerned, what is being discussed in this thread is the new HYP Practical guidance. There are several different strands to that discussion, and I realise that some of them are about some posts that have been removed and the relevance of the new guidance to those post removals, but my post was prompted by Alaric's comment, to acknowledge that what he said about the lack of agreement on the form of benchmarks was true, and point out that there's no agreement on quite a lot of other things as well, as reflected by what is not in the guidance.Tracing what Alaric's comment was prompted by back a bit further, it does seem to have been the posts you refer to, starting (I think!) at viewtopic.php?p=318702#p318702. That post starts "Just to clarify" and I'm not entirely certain what previous statement he was clarifying, but a plausible chain leading up to it is viewtopic.php?p=317344#p317344 (my comment about a superfluous "just" in some advice you'd given about not posting on HYP Practical excessively restricting the situations it applies to), viewtopic.php?p=317345#p317345 (Alaric's reply to my comment asking whether the idea was that some people shouldn't read any board other than HYP Practical), viewtopic.php?p=317461#p317461 (I'm puzzled how your advice that some people should not post on HYP Practical could possibly be read that way), then Alaric posts to clarify that he was asking about the acceptability of posting on HYS&S, specifically in relation to some posts there. And all of that is well over 100 posts into this thread - I'm sure that if I chased things back further, I would find several more shifts of exactly what was being discussed!

I'm not trying to say that anything wrong was done there (*) - my point is that with a fairly broad subject like this thread's, the discussion will wander between different aspects of the subject. Alaric's comment "There isn't agreement on what form a benchmark should take. For a drawdown HYP there are two sources of value, namely the income withdrawn and the capital remaining. For an accumulating HYP there's the accumulated capital value after reinvestment. Or is this disputed because of the HYP mantra "capital doesn't matter"?" that I quoted before what I said was about whether there was agreement on the form benchmarks should take, and mentioned another thing that I know there's no agreement on. I picked up on that aspect of HYP Practical and of its guidance (for the latter, it shows up in what is not in the guidance), and I really don't think you should expect my post to be about any of the previously-discussed aspects! Basically, the quote indicates what I was trying to discuss (which IMHO is the main job of quotes, and incidentally what is wrong with quoting the entirety of big posts just to comment on one aspect of them - doing so can make it hard for readers to work out which aspect one is addressing).

Anyway, on the issues you mention, I have three main views. The first is on the general issue of people feeling that they're excluded from posting on HYP Practical - as I've said previously, I feel that the sentence "If you are not a HYP investor, then do not post here." plays the man rather than the ball, and should be replaced with something about what the poster is going to say, not what the poster is. That changes it from something that excludes whole classes of people from the board, which is not something we have on TLF (**), to just a strong reminder to stay on-topic for the board. It also makes it into a rule that moderators have the information required to do their job: they can always see what a post says, they can't always see what type of investor the poster is.

My second main view is that quite a few aspects of the rules could do with subsidiary guidance, but such guidance only exists for a few of them (selling and LTBH in the paragraph following the bullet list, FTSE100 and share yields in the following note about yields). For instance, there's no guidance about diversification - all mention of 15 shares in 15 sectors has vanished, without any other numbers taking their place. Some guidance about this and other matters is probably a good idea - I think the way I would probably do this is by producing a second post for the thread, starting something like:

"Subsidiary guidance

The following guidance is about various aspects of how the rules should be interpreted and how they interact with some practical aspects of taking a HYP approach. Please consult it if you have difficulty understanding or applying the rules, and ask on the Biscuit Bar if it doesn't help.

Selling and LTBH: It is acknowledged that individual HYP investors may from time to time see the need to sell individual HYP stocks, perhaps in response to adverse performance, portfolio imbalance, or a corporate action, e.g. takeover. It is further acknowledged that it would be unrealistic to rule that discussion of such actions is outside the board’s remit. It is stressed, however, that HYP investing was always intended to be a LTBH strategy.

Yield: There are multiple sources for FTSE 100 yield data, although they don’t always agree. Posters are asked to make clear when discussing yield whether they are referring to historic yield (as quoted by many data sources), forecast yield, or some other yield such as yield on bought cost. For the avoidance of doubt, the FTSE 100 index referred to is the normal, widely-quoted capitalisation weighted version of the index, and not the less well known equally weighted version, or any other version.

Diversification: This board's standard for good diversification is at least 15 shares in at least 15 sectors. It is acknowledged that individual HYP investors may prefer greater diversification than that, and also that meeting this standard will sometimes take time, for example for a HYP in the early stages of being constructed."

and continuing with whatever other bits of such guidance are wanted. The first post in the thread would be a short statement of the objective and the rules - indeed, shorter than it is at present, since the guidance about selling, LTBH and yield would be moved from it into the subsidiary guidance - and would rarely need to be changed. The subsidiary guidance in the second post would probably end up longer and might be changed rather more often, depending on what further clarifications turn out to be needed. Separating it into two posts isn't strictly speaking necessary, but having a very clear division between "rules you really need to know" and "stuff to consult if you have problems" would help IMHO.

My third main view is that I think there's an unwritten, rather commonsense rule that applies to all boards (not just HYP Practical) that brief mentions of off-topic matters are OK provided they're worded as unprovocatively as reasonably possible, and even desirable when they're important background information, but treating those mentions as an invitation to discuss those off-topic matters in detail is not OK. For example, "No tobacco shares, please" is OK, and adding "I have ethical objections" is also OK IMHO: there's some risk either way of provoking questions like "Why no tobacco shares?" or "What are your ethical objections to tobacco shares?", but having some such risk is an unavoidable price of letting people know your preferences to save them from wasting their time suggesting shares you find unacceptable. But "No tobacco shares - I can't see how people who invest in an industry that kills its customers can live with themselves" is definitely too provocative! And replying to any of those with "How can you object to tobacco shares and not to booze shares, which kill far more of their customers?" or any other response discussing ethical investing in detail is also unacceptable.

I think that same principle applies to benchmarks. Most benchmarks I can think off offhand are either investments themselves or indices that have pretty accurate proxy investments available for them in the form of index trackers, and using benchmarks is a practical management technique many HYPers use to judge how well they're doing. So mentioning them needs to be allowed, but significant discussion of them as investment strategies to be compared with HYP strategies should not be. Suitable subsidiary guidance might be something like:

"Benchmarks: Many individual HYP investors like to use an inflation measure, stockmarket index or specific investment as a benchmark against which to measure their HYP's performance. It is acceptable to say that you use a particular benchmark and to report briefly how your HYP compared with the benchmark, but avoid discussing the benchmark or a closely-related investment as an investment strategy that might be used instead of a HYP strategy. For example, it is acceptable to use the FTSE100 index as a benchmark and to report that your HYP has underperformed it, but use another board if you want to go on to say that maybe you should be investing in a FTSE100 tracker instead.

One final comment: after that, there is doubtless still a grey area between an acceptable HYP strategy vs benchmark comparison and a definitely off-topic HYP strategy vs another investment strategy comparison - it's just a smaller grey area than that left by the current state of the HYP Practical guidance. But don't try to get rid of every grey area in the rules and guidance - that's a hopelessly difficult task!

(*) Pedantically the acceptability of posts on HYS&S is off-topic for this thread, since it's about HYP Practical - but IMHO what's acceptable on HYP Practical and what's acceptable on HYS&S are sufficiently related that there shouldn't be any objection. In any case, I'm not objecting to it!

(**) Unless you count the moderators-only board, which IMHO has to exclude non-moderators to allow moderators to discuss and agree a common approach without being paralysed by it being virtually certain that every idea suggested on it would attract objections from quite a few users.

Gengulphus

[Alaric]

I asked Google to search for
"the motley fool objective of hyp"

This is what it found

https://www.fool.co.uk/investing-basics ... portfolio/

from which

It’s an income investing strategy designed as an alternative to purchasing an annuity.

[Arborbridge]

Having read Gengulphus's long and excellent post below, it seems to me that what generally "went out of the window" on HYP-P in the past year or two was a simply factor: a reasonable of common sense.
I'm not even attempting to define that, but I suspect that most long term hypers from TMF days will know what I mean. We seemed to reach a state with people bickering over exact rules and exactly what one could post so the whole thing became next to intolerable for those who had been used to the previous more relaxed atmosphere.
Now we've even reached the stage in which people who publicly admit claim no interest in HYP trying to dictate where and what long term HYPers can post in minute detail: what a bizarre position to be in. We went through a period of what was essentially a mild form of trolling in which the board was cluttered by picky questions dissecting every remark or reporting those mildly OT.

Well, there are signs that we might have gone beyond this stage. Hopefully, any arguments can now be rehearsed on here and the HYP-P board return to the same degree of tolerance and common sense that it used to enjoy.

Arb.

[Arborbridge]

I asked Google to search for
"the motley fool objective of hyp"

This is what it found

https://www.fool.co.uk/investing-basics ... portfolio/

from which

It’s an income investing strategy designed as an alternative to purchasing an annuity.

And it continues:
"The total dividends received should ideally rise above the rate of inflation, therefore protecting the purchasing power of your income stream. A secondary aim is for the capital performance of the shares picked to outperform the UK market, as measured by the FTSE 100 index."

This is where my own bowdlerised target comes from, my own target for my HYP: a high income rising at RPI with some chance of rising capital". I believe the rising capital bit was always a matter of "look after the dividends and the capital will look after itself" rather in the way which Gengulphus mentioned.

Stephen Bland always emphasised the income strategy, and any idea that HYP is also a particularly good way to high TR is erroneous. I wouldn't judge its success against investment plans designed for high TR, and frankly, I doubt whether Stephen Bland would either. It's not a competition against strong TR growth ideas and any such comparison should bear that in mind.

Personally, I always regarded HYP as an alternative to an annuity - that was the main reason I started one. I could hopefully achieve a higher income from HYP than an annuity and not lose all my capital by surrendering it. This modest aim was all I needed and all I expected: so far it has worked for ten years.

Arb.

[Alaric]

And it continues:
[i] "The total dividends received should ideally rise above the rate of inflation, therefore protecting the purchasing power of your income stream.

With that as a primary objective, a package of ITs should be able to deliver the same with the additional protection of a much reduced vulnerability to a collapse in declared dividends. If it's an annuity comparison, I would assume "total dividends received" would mean in each year rather than over the lifetime of the portfolio.

How many of the contributors on HYP-P are running an annuity substitute? The frequent chatter about top ups and reinvestment of dividends suggests they are mostly running for accumulation of wealth.

[88V8]

With that as a primary objective, a package of ITs should be able to deliver the same with the additional protection of a much reduced vulnerability to a collapse in declared dividends.

How many of the contributors on HYP-P are running an annuity substitute?

Me.

Also have ITs and FI.

But yes, at the moment a parcel of ITs would be serener than the equities.

V8

[Gengulphus]

Personally, I think the discussion now on HYP-P concerning SSE is just the sort of discussion which should be held on that particularly board. It's about a HYP share and whether it can sustain the dividend - all good HYP relevant stuff.

There's an inference that it is supporting the dividend by borrowing. That has become a feature of at least some of the stocks that inhabit the HYP universe, but not one that can be expressed on the HYP-P board.

Where on earth did you get that from? Reading the new HYP Practical guidance, I not only fail to find anything prohibiting discussing that feature of some stocks - I also do find "When bought, should reasonably be expected to sustain, and preferably grow their dividends in the future." That feature will, if sustained long enough, make it thoroughly unreasonable to expect the dividend to be sustained, let alone grown, so it is directly relevant to something the guidance says a HYP strategy should consider. (Though only "relevant", not "prohibitive if found", because of the "if sustained long enough" condition - i.e. one might end up with a considered opinion that it is highly unlikely to be sustained long enough to force a dividend cut.)

It's part of the selection process to sort shares by dividend yield. That's likely to throw up shares where the dividend isn't supported. Saying so is being critical of the selection process and thus of HYP in general, particularly where dividend yield is treated as the primary driver for selection.

Again, where on earth did you get that from? Still looking at the new guidance, I see nothing in it that says the selection process a HYPer uses must include sorting shares by dividend yield. And it certainly doesn't say that the shares with the highest yields must be purchased uncritically: quite the opposite, as it indicates that sustainability of the dividend and adequate diversification of the portfolio are just as important as a high yield.

I suspect that the answer is that you got the idea that sorting shares by dividend yield was involved from some posters about using it as part of their own HYP share selection process and/or recommending its use by others. That's fine: HYPers saying what selection process they use themselves and/or recommending that other HYPers sort shares by dividend yield as part of their selection processes is a fine example of the sort of practicality of running a HYP that HYP Practical is intended for! And as part of a selection process that also includes checks on diversification and dividend sustainability, it works fine in my experience - but it's not essential and the board guidance doesn't require it.

Other posters might go beyond describing what they do themselves and making recommendations about what other HYPers should do, for instance by insisting that sorting shares by dividend yield is an essential part of the HYP selection process or by indicating that one isn't a "true HYPer" if one doesn't do it. If they do, then at least IMHO they're breaking the site rule that posters are to be respectful to each other: trying to insist that others adhere to more restrictions than the board and site rules impose isn't respectful, nor is 'playing the man'. I would recommend dealing with such cases either by reporting them or by ignoring them (which can be done either by simply dropping out of that strand of the discussion, or by proceeding with it as though the offending remarks hadn't been made).

And as far as the idea that HYP share selection is just a matter of picking the highest yielder with no further checks is concerned, that idea is basically a straw man, i.e. an easy-to-attack, oversimplified caricature of what HYPers actually do in practice. That straw man can arise in several ways: it can be a deliberate straw man used by a HYP opponent in the hope that they'll get away with it, but it can also arise through inadvertent carelessness in various ways. Examples are that a reader might overlook a phrase like "that meet my requirements" in a description of a HYP selection process, or that a poster might neglect to put such a phrase into the description they're posting, or that it might arise through what I think of as 'HYP mythology': i.e. that the person using it may have seen it said so many times in the past that it's become part of what they think they know about HYP without them ever having actually checked whether it's true.

Since that straw man might be inadvertent or careless, countering it is probably best done in the first place by simply pointing out that it's not true, backing that up as appropriate, e.g. by pointing out an overlooked phrase or by pointing out that the board rules requires diversification and dividend sustainability to be considered as well as a high yield. If persisted in, however, it becomes a deliberate attack on using a HYP approach and IMHO ignoring it or reporting it are the sensible options.

Gengulphus

[Arborbridge]

And it continues:
[i] "The total dividends received should ideally rise above the rate of inflation, therefore protecting the purchasing power of your income stream.

With that as a primary objective, a package of ITs should be able to deliver the same with the additional protection of a much reduced vulnerability to a collapse in declared dividends. If it's an annuity comparison, I would assume "total dividends received" would mean in each year rather than over the lifetime of the portfolio.

How many of the contributors on HYP-P are running an annuity substitute? The frequent chatter about top ups and reinvestment of dividends suggests they are mostly running for accumulation of wealth.

With regard to the first point, you may well be correct. However, some HYPers prefer to have control and believe that by directly investing in similar shares they could gain by reduction of fees. One can achieve a higher yield, though whether this offsets the risk is moot. In my own experience, I find it hard to outrun the better standard managers. However, it's all a matter of personal choice. I'd just let HYPers be, if that's what they want to do - each of us has to find the style which suits us at any given stage of life.

The second point, I wouldn't know the answer, but topups occur naturally for me as the cash is excess cash generated by my Safety Margin. Re-investment could be to achieve high income (as it is in my case) not necessarily for the accumulation of wealth. Either way, it's a legitimate aim for people, so I'm not quite sure why you would be exercised over it.

Arb.

[Arborbridge]

I suspect that the answer is that you got the idea that sorting shares by dividend yield was involved from some posters about using it as part of their own HYP share selection process and/or recommending its use by others.
Gengulphus

Or to be fair to Alaric, he might well have found the idea in the original writings of Pyad because that was the method described by him. It is the guidelines here which have moved away from the original scheme so are to the extent are "not HYP" so to speak. They've been sanitised, I suspect.

Ian Hughes frequently mentions his method of selecting shares, and he uses the method described by Pyad which codified how HYP works. Arrange the shares in order of yield and work down the list.....etc etc. Of course, I agree with all you say about not being obliged to buy shares uncritically and safety factors need to be applied.

Arb.

[Alaric]

Again, where on earth did you get that from?

Usually from the most enthusiastic supporters of what they term "The HYP Strategy".

Selecting stocks by dividend yield is a given as selections are supposed to be above the FTSE 100 average and a sort would be a means of generating such a list. When I suggested that one should also look at how the stocks came to have a high yield, that was not something a "HYPer" would do. It's the practical point that stinkers like Carillion should be avoided. It's a mixed bag as high yield can indicate a recent price crash and thus a potential recovery.

[onthemove]

With that as a primary objective, a package of ITs should be able to deliver the same with the additional protection of a much reduced vulnerability to a collapse in declared dividends. If it's an annuity comparison, I would assume "total dividends received" would mean in each year rather than over the lifetime of the portfolio.

A perfectly fine and valid topic of discussion on the HYP-Strategies board.

Anyone running an HYP who feels they would like to join in the discussion can also inhabit the strategies board. The two are not entirely mutually exclusive. Only the HYP-Practical board has the more restrictive guidelines in order to let those just wanting to get on with running an HYP in peace, do so.

Except...

Going back to my earlier point - the issue isn't that non-HYPers just want to discuss these issues.

The issue is WHO they want to discuss the issues with.

If it was just the topic of discussion the non-HYPers were interested in, they would quite happily be getting on with doing it on HYP-Strategies.

But no, instead, they've decamped over here, to a thread about HYP-Practical, where they know there are a number of the inhabitants of the HYP practical board actively participating, and now they've put out the bait and are starting to reel them in...

Fair enough if HYPers want to discuss it, but why not do it on the HYP-Strategies board specifically allotted for that purpose (amongst other, broader aspects as well).

Or aren't there enough HYP fish in that pool to make it worth baiting?

[PinkDalek]

From the OP:

However, the main purpose of this post is to explain the rationale for the changes, rather than re-open discussion[u].

With honourable exceptions and after 11 pages or so, how is that initial objective going?

Seems to me many of the replies have little to do with the OP and more to do with repeating what has been said in oh so many prior topics here and elsewhere and so it continues.

Many of the soundbites are being repeated endlessly. It is as if they come from a database of some sort.

[Alaric]

A perfectly fine and valid topic of discussion on the HYP-Strategies board.

There's no such board.

The title is High Yield Shares & Strategies - General

This board, Biscuit Bar is the dedicated space for discussing what is or isn't to be discussed on various boards.

Someone suggested that HYP had more rules than Mornington Crescent.

[onthemove]

A perfectly fine and valid topic of discussion on the HYP-Strategies board.

There's no such board.

The title is High Yield Shares & Strategies - General

This board, Biscuit Bar is the dedicated space for discussing what is or isn't to be discussed on various boards.

Someone suggested that HYP had more rules than Mornington Crescent.

There's no such board as HYP-P either, yet most people seem perfectly capable of understanding which board is being referred to.

Given the choice of HYP-P and HYP-S, I would expect that any one with even a moderate IQ would understand perfectly well which one I'm referring to when I abbreviate it to HYP-Strategies.

The length and pointlessness of these discussions don't particularly warrant pedantically spelling out the exact name of the board character-perfect every time

But if you want to keep finding an argument for the sake of finding an argument... keep baiting away.

[Alaric]

Given the choice of HYP-P and HYP-S, I would expect that any one with even a moderate IQ would understand perfectly well which one I'm referring to when I abbreviate it to HYP-Strategies..

The Strategies board isn't part of the "HYP" universe. In my view HYP as an abbreviation should be abandoned. Those seeking income for drawdown could refer to it as Annuity Replacement Portfolio. Those reinvesting are following a Dividend Reinvestment Strategy.

[Gengulphus]

I asked Google to search for
"the motley fool objective of hyp"

This is what it found

https://www.fool.co.uk/investing-basics ... portfolio/

from which

It’s an income investing strategy designed as an alternative to purchasing an annuity.

Thanks, that's interesting to know - but as a way that particular piece of 'HYP mythology' has been spread, not as an authoritative source that it's true. The reason it's not the latter is that Stephen Bland's (pyad's) November 2000 article introducing his HYP strategy starts:

"Let's say you have retired with a lump sum available from your pension plan, or maybe have been made redundant with a payoff. Alternatively ,perhaps you have been saving hard for a long time and have created a fund to invest for income. What should you do? What options are open to you as an income seeker? There are a very large number.

Conventional wisdom on this topic from IFAs will tend to propel you in the direction of some kind of insurance company product such as guaranteed income bonds or the like. A lot of literature on the subject of retirement investing for income suggests that, even if you have been saving through equity vehicles of some kind up until now, there should be some switch away from equities just because you have retired.

Advisers make such comments because of the perceived risk of keeping money in shares, it being felt by them that at the age of, say, 60, one should be taking less risk than before with savings. From what I have seen, the great majority of retirement lump sums end up either in insurance company investments, or simply in National Savings and bank and building society deposits.

My proposition is that far from avoiding equities, retirement income seekers should actively migrate to this form of investment, even if they have never done so before. ..."

That's the horse's-mouth source for what HYP was designed as, not what an unidentified TMF author wrote years later, and it clearly indicates that it was designed as an alternative to insurance company products like guaranteed income bonds, National Savings accounts and bank and building society accounts. Furthermore, like HYPs all of those offered both income and continued access to capital, with varying balances of risk to each, whereas annuities offered only income, irrevocably losing all access to capital. I.e. as well as what Stephen Bland says he designed it as, HYP also makes rather more sense as an alternative to guaranteed income bonds and National Savings/bank/building society accounts, fulfillng a similar role in an overall investment strategy to them, than as an alternative to an annuity.

Gengulphus

[onthemove]

The Strategies board isn't part of the "HYP" universe.

Can't possibly think why you'd think that.

Or may because the people on HYP-P just wanting to get on with running their HYP portfolio, don't often go over to HYS-S and so can't be (ahem) 'engaged in discussion' on HYS-S about why their approach is all wrong.

Meaning that on HYS-S it isn't possible to point out to HYPer's faces each time a HYP share cuts their dividend, or a HYP share falls in price, how the HYP idea is a complete and utter catastrophic failure that just does not compare to others in total absolute returns and how non-HYPers clearly had it right all the time by choosing not to follow a HYP approach.

If you think I'm incorrect...

... how about you suggest what other HYP-type board you'd like to add into the "HYP Universe" to sit alongside the HYP-Practical board, so that the HYP-Practical people can still get on with running their HYP in peace without constant wearing irritation from non-HYPers.

Here's my suggestion...

Create an "HYP-I-Just-Don't-Like-It" board

This board is where those not convinced of the HYP approach can endlessly repeat to each other why the HYP approach isn't for them, and every time a HYP share cuts its dividend they can all pat themselves on the back and say "hey guys, we said all along this approach was a failure"

And any and all reasons why HYP is a disaster can be discussed to poster's heart's content.

But like I say... I doubt either of these options (neither my suggestion, nor the idea of you suggesting an alternative board either) will satisfy you.

Like I say, it's not the "what" that non-HYPers are bothered about discussing, it's the "who" they want to discuss it with.

And while HYPers have their own little protected board where the non-HYPers are not permitted to continuously bug them, I very much doubt the non-HYPers will ever be satisfied.

Please feel free to prove me wrong...

… please feel free to propose an alternative new board that will keep you happy.

[dealtn]

Anyway, on the issues you mention, I have three main views. The first is on the general issue of people feeling that they're excluded from posting on HYP Practical - as I've said previously, I feel that the sentence "If you are not a HYP investor, then do not post here." plays the man rather than the ball, and should be replaced with something about what the poster is going to say, not what the poster is. That changes it from something that excludes whole classes of people from the board, which is not something we have on TLF (**), to just a strong reminder to stay on-topic for the board. It also makes it into a rule that moderators have the information required to do their job: they can always see what a post says, they can't always see what type of investor the poster is.

Precisely!

[Alaric]

There's a summary of the pros and cons of what the poster regards and it appears uses as a HYP strategy on the High Yield general board.

viewtopic.php?f=31&t=23969#p319284