HYP Practical guidance: what is the FTSE 100 yield?

[tjh290633]

[edit] Several deleted [/edit] posts off topic for the subject matter. Please do not discuss moderation here.

TJH

Moderator Message:
Several posts on this thread have been deleted for discussing moderation.
Removed the references. But TJH's point is still valid. - Gryffron

[MrFoolish]

I think that's 'good old days' syndrome - posters were very disruptive from the autumn of 2007 to the spring of 2008
Gengulphus

And I think that's "seeing the world through your own prism" syndrome. What you take to be "very disruptive", others might just see as expressing a contrary opinion.

[Gengulphus]

I think that's 'good old days' syndrome - posters were very disruptive from the autumn of 2007 to the spring of 2008

And I think that's "seeing the world through your own prism" syndrome. What you take to be "very disruptive", others might just see as expressing a contrary opinion.

No, it was not seeing the world through my own prism. There were endless "should one use a HYP strategy or not?" arguments at the time on the TMF board, which spread on to most threads no matter what their subject was supposed to be, and many other people regarded it as disruptive, including the TMF moderators. Basically, there is no problem if someone expresses a contrary opinion on a subject, in a thread that's properly about that subject, but if they express it repetitively and on every thread in which they can find the slightest excuse to bring it up, and especially if people with the opposite opinion decide to argue against that contrary opinion in every thread in which it is posted, no matter how many threads that is and no matter what the threads are supposed to be about, it becomes highly disruptive. The disruption is not caused by either side's opinions as such, but by both sides failing to exercise restraint about where to argue about them, and as a result swamping discussion of other matters.

On a point that led to some now-deleted discussions:

I'll just leave with the strong impression that people (including a moderator) aren't interested in making this aspect of the current guidance work.

I should clarify that I meant making it work for ordinary users - whether it works for moderators is up to them to decide, but for ordinary users, the purpose of board guidance is to guide them as to what's on-topic for the board, and IMHO the test against the FTSE100 yield is currently instead guiding them into arguing about whether shares are on-topic on the board...

Gengulphus

[Itsallaguess]

for ordinary users, the purpose of board guidance is to guide them as to what's on-topic for the board, and IMHO the test against the FTSE100 yield is currently instead guiding them into arguing about whether shares are on-topic on the board...

It's difficult to disagree with that Gengulphus.

In an ideal world it would probably be 'a good thing' to be able to have a definitive data-source for a 'HYP yield floor' to be able to point at, but it's clear both from this thread and the many that have come before it on this topic that as things stand, that sought-after data-source simply doesn't exist as far as we're aware, and is frankly very unlikely to, given the swift variations in the necessary underlying data..

But even with the above said, one of the main things the current HYP Practical Guidance is trying to achieve overall is to build in some welcome flexibility for both posters and moderators, and generally position itself quite rightly as a guide for the 'spirit of the HYP Practical rules' rather than be overly prescriptive and dogmatic, and so maybe finding some sort of sweet-spot between declaring an 'acceptable yield-floor' that is not too high so as to then both unnecessarily restrict candidate-choice, and (worse, in my opinion...) perhaps even regularly drive investors towards the 'riskier end' of the yield-spectrum, and finding one that is 'not too low' so as to make the idea that potential HYP candidates might clearly struggle to be called 'High Yield' candidates in the first place, might be the sort of end-goal that would perhaps satisfy your hope for clearer guidance in this area, whilst still maintaining the overarching aim of maintaining a good level of flexibility in the HYP Practical guidance itself.

So if that might be somewhere near an acceptable 'end-goal' for this discussion, then perhaps the next area of concern might be with regards to the suitability and (perhaps more importantly...) the longevity of any particular independent data-source that we might think appropriate for this task, and as we've found here and in earlier discussions on the subject, this alone is an area that can lead to quite varied results, but I was wondering if a suitable solution to this issue might actually be one where a persistent data-source might be used initially, and then given some of the above 'yield margin flexibility' by simply deducting a fixed figure from the persistent data-source figure?

For instance, if we look at the current London Stock Exchange page for the FTSE 100, which I would like to think ticks the 'persistent data-source' box at least, we can see that it's currently showing a FTSE 100 Dividend Yield of 4.7% -



Source - https://www.londonstockexchange.com/indices/ftse-100

So for the sake of this discussion, and taking account of the requirement to allow for some often-needed flexibility in the HYP candidate-selection process, would we perhaps be able to tick all the boxes above by simply taking a fixed 1% figure off the above data-source figure?

Currently, that would give a HYP yield-test of 3.7%, which interestingly gives a figure roughly around the same area as the Dividend Data figure of 3.73% (https://www.dividenddata.co.uk/dividendyield.py?market=ftse100), but my concern with just using the Dividend Data figure from the offset would be the previously mentioned 'persistent data-source' issue, where we might hopefully expect the London Stock Exchange site to remain stable as a potential data-source for the initial yield-figure in a much more reliable way, but I mention the Dividend Data site just because reducing the London Stock Exchange FTSE 100 yield figure by 1% came to roughly the same ball-park yield figure...

So as the London Stock Exchange FTSE 100 yield figure would 'float' automatically, given the changes in the underlying 'FTSE Russell' data that it's using, then the above might at least give a reasonable answer to the 'FTSE 100 yield-test' question, whilst trying to maintain a good level of flexibility to that yield-test so as not to unnecessarily restrict choice, or drive people into areas of the yield-spectrum from the off-set that they perhaps might prefer to stay away from at any particular point in time...

Of course my suggestion of a 1% reduction to give a current 'yield-test' figure of 3.7% might be deemed to be too low, and perhaps a reduction of 0.5% might be put forward as a more suitable level of flexibility, which would then give a yield-test figure of 4.2%, but I was more concerned with offering the above up as a potential 'process-solution' to the issue really, given the problems in this area that have been previously discussed here and in earlier threads on the subject.

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[MrFoolish]

No, it was not seeing the world through my own prism. There were endless "should one use a HYP strategy or not?" arguments at the time on the TMF board, which spread on to most threads no matter what their subject was supposed to be, and many other people regarded it as disruptive, including the TMF moderators.
Gengulphus

That is your recollection but it isn't mine.

Yes, there were some "should one use a HYP strategy or not?" arguments. But there were plenty more nuanced discussions about the suitability of investment trusts, what Doris was all about, buying the odd foreign shares and slightly lower yielding shares, etc, etc. These tended to get leapt on by the purists and reported to the TMF moderators, who sometimes stepped in for a quiet life on the board. Basically they were breaking up quarrels between opposing views, rather than taking sides. The situation wasn't that different to the multiplicity of arguments we get on TLF. For you to attribute a single to view to the TMF moderators on the matter is over-simplistic.

[Wizard]

for ordinary users, the purpose of board guidance is to guide them as to what's on-topic for the board, and IMHO the test against the FTSE100 yield is currently instead guiding them into arguing about whether shares are on-topic on the board...

It's difficult to disagree with that Gengulphus.

In an ideal world it would probably be 'a good thing' to be able to have a definitive data-source for a 'HYP yield floor' to be able to point at, but it's clear both from this thread and the many that have come before it on this topic that as things stand, that sought-after data-source simply doesn't exist as far as we're aware, and is frankly very unlikely to, given the swift variations in the necessary underlying data..

But even with the above said, one of the main things the current HYP Practical Guidance is trying to achieve overall is to build in some welcome flexibility for both posters and moderators, and generally position itself quite rightly as a guide for the 'spirit of the HYP Practical rules' rather than be overly prescriptive and dogmatic, and so maybe finding some sort of sweet-spot between declaring an 'acceptable yield-floor' that is not too high so as to then both unnecessarily restrict candidate-choice, and (worse, in my opinion...) perhaps even regularly drive investors towards the 'riskier end' of the yield-spectrum, and finding one that is 'not too low' so as to make the idea that potential HYP candidates might clearly struggle to be called 'High Yield' candidates in the first place, might be the sort of end-goal that would perhaps satisfy your hope for clearer guidance in this area, whilst still maintaining the overarching aim of maintaining a good level of flexibility in the HYP Practical guidance itself.

So if that might be somewhere near an acceptable 'end-goal' for this discussion, then perhaps the next area of concern might be with regards to the suitability and (perhaps more importantly...) the longevity of any particular independent data-source that we might think appropriate for this task, and as we've found here and in earlier discussions on the subject, this alone is an area that can lead to quite varied results, but I was wondering if a suitable solution to this issue might actually be one where a persistent data-source might be used initially, and then given some of the above 'yield margin flexibility' by simply deducting a fixed figure from the persistent data-source figure?

For instance, if we look at the current London Stock Exchange page for the FTSE 100, which I would like to think ticks the 'persistent data-source' box at least, we can see that it's currently showing a FTSE 100 Dividend Yield of 4.7% -



Source - https://www.londonstockexchange.com/indices/ftse-100

So for the sake of this discussion, and taking account of the requirement to allow for some often-needed flexibility in the HYP candidate-selection process, would we perhaps be able to tick all the boxes above by simply taking a fixed 1% figure off the above data-source figure?

Currently, that would give a HYP yield-test of 3.7%, which interestingly gives a figure roughly around the same area as the Dividend Data figure of 3.73% (https://www.dividenddata.co.uk/dividendyield.py?market=ftse100), but my concern with just using the Dividend Data figure from the offset would be the previously mentioned 'persistent data-source' issue, where we might hopefully expect the London Stock Exchange site to remain stable as a potential data-source for the initial yield-figure in a much more reliable way, but I mention the Dividend Data site just because reducing the London Stock Exchange FTSE 100 yield figure by 1% came to roughly the same ball-park yield figure...

So as the London Stock Exchange FTSE 100 yield figure would 'float' automatically, given the changes in the underlying 'FTSE Russell' data that it's using, then the above might at least give a reasonable answer to the 'FTSE 100 yield-test' question, whilst trying to maintain a good level of flexibility to that yield-test so as not to unnecessarily restrict choice, or drive people into areas of the yield-spectrum from the off-set that they perhaps might prefer to stay away from at any particular point in time...

Of course my suggestion of a 1% reduction to give a current 'yield-test' figure of 3.7% might be deemed to be too low, and perhaps a reduction of 0.5% might be put forward as a more suitable level of flexibility, which would then give a yield-test figure of 4.2%, but I was more concerned with offering the above up as a potential 'process-solution' to the issue really, given the problems in this area that have been previously discussed here and in earlier threads on the subject.

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

A very thoughtful post IAAG.

A couple of questions. First, pedantic I know, but when you talk about flexibility do you mean 1% point, rather than 1%? I think the former. Second, are you speaking in the capacity of a Moderator or a poster? It is all very well posters chatting about this, but unless Site Admin or Moderators have some interest in engaging and are willing to consider amending the guidance it is IMHO a bit of a waste of time.

[Itsallaguess]

A couple of questions.

First, pedantic I know, but when you talk about flexibility do you mean 1% point, rather than 1%? I think the former.

Second, are you speaking in the capacity of a Moderator or a poster? It is all very well posters chatting about this, but unless Site Admin or Moderators have some interest in engaging and are willing to consider amending the guidance it is IMHO a bit of a waste of time.

I was discussing the potential option of using the single-source London Stock Exchange FTSE 100 yield figure (currently 4.7%), and then lowering it by a set amount to allow for both the potential for 'ongoing noise' in the underlying data, and also allowing a fixed margin allowance so as to maintain an overall steer towards 'High Yield' constituents, whilst giving a level of 'defined flexibility' at the same time.

I used a subsequent 1% reduction of that initial yield figure as part of that discussion just to initially see if a subsequent 'yield-floor' of 3.7% (as it would currently stand using this technique) might deliver a 'yield-floor' that might be useful to help solve the various known issues with this type of problem, whilst also helping to maintain some level of required poster and moderation flexibility when trying to come up with a 'known-process' that might be used to formulate an answer to the original question. I also then mentioned that if a 0.5% yield reduction were to be used at the current time, then that potential 'yield-floor' would be 4.2% using this same technique...

Regarding your second question, I've posted on this thread as an interested observer only, and I'm just trying to engage with what I think is a quite valid question from Gengulphus on this subject.

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[dealtn]

A couple of questions.

First, pedantic I know, but when you talk about flexibility do you mean 1% point, rather than 1%? I think the former.

Second, are you speaking in the capacity of a Moderator or a poster? It is all very well posters chatting about this, but unless Site Admin or Moderators have some interest in engaging and are willing to consider amending the guidance it is IMHO a bit of a waste of time.

I was discussing the potential option of using the single-source London Stock Exchange FTSE 100 yield figure (currently 4.7%), and then lowering it by a set amount to allow for both the potential for 'ongoing noise' in the underlying data, and also allowing a fixed margin allowance so as to maintain an overall steer towards 'High Yield' constituents, whilst giving a level of 'defined flexibility' at the same time.

I used a subsequent 1% reduction of that initial yield figure as part of that discussion just to initially see if a subsequent 'yield-floor' of 3.7% (as it would currently stand using this technique) might deliver a 'yield-floor' that might be useful to help solve the various known issues with this type of problem, whilst also helping to maintain some level of required poster and moderation flexibility when trying to come up with a 'known-process' that might be used to formulate an answer to the original question. I also then mentioned that if a 0.5% yield reduction were to be used at the current time, then that potential 'yield-floor' would be 4.2% using this same technique...

Regarding your second question, I've posted on this thread as an interested observer only, and I'm just trying to engage with what I think is a quite valid question from Gengulphus on this subject.

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

Again I should point out I am not a HYPer so it's not really my "fight" in any practical sense, more an intellectual curiousity.

I find it odd that you should be using a "historic" yield as a means to determine future yields, full stop. So such a route can only be seen as desirable in the absence of any commonly accessible, and trustworthy alternative for future yields. (The data sources I use fail those tests).

Secondly it is again intuitively odd that in determine a threshold for High Yield candidates you would be using a method for deriving some kind of "average" or "benchmark" yield and then subtracting from it. I appreciate you are calling this a "floor", but were I pursuing candidates for High Yield (regardless of the strategy, and its rules/guidelines) I would be trying to establish that benchmark and adding to it.

Even from a Board Guideline perspective, and a desire to limit the "pointless" discussions around "off-topic" I would imagine having a lower than average benchmark, even as a floor, would only encourage such "off-topic" accusations.

[Wizard]

A couple of questions.

First, pedantic I know, but when you talk about flexibility do you mean 1% point, rather than 1%? I think the former.

Second, are you speaking in the capacity of a Moderator or a poster? It is all very well posters chatting about this, but unless Site Admin or Moderators have some interest in engaging and are willing to consider amending the guidance it is IMHO a bit of a waste of time.

I was discussing the potential option of using the single-source London Stock Exchange FTSE 100 yield figure (currently 4.7%), and then lowering it by a set amount to allow for both the potential for 'ongoing noise' in the underlying data, and also allowing a fixed margin allowance so as to maintain an overall steer towards 'High Yield' constituents, whilst giving a level of 'defined flexibility' at the same time.

I used a subsequent 1% reduction of that initial yield figure as part of that discussion just to initially see if a subsequent 'yield-floor' of 3.7% (as it would currently stand using this technique) might deliver a 'yield-floor' that might be useful to help solve the various known issues with this type of problem, whilst also helping to maintain some level of required poster and moderation flexibility when trying to come up with a 'known-process' that might be used to formulate an answer to the original question. I also then mentioned that if a 0.5% yield reduction were to be used at the current time, then that potential 'yield-floor' would be 4.2% using this same technique...

Regarding your second question, I've posted on this thread as an interested observer only, and I'm just trying to engage with what I think is a quite valid question from Gengulphus on this subject.

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

My first point was that a 1% reduction will vary with the value it is applied to. So 1% of 10% is 0.1%, but 1% of 5% is 0.05%. So if you apply a 1% reduction it will vary with the level of the single source. In contrast 1% point will be 1% point whatever it is applied to.

I agree it is a very sensible question, as you will have seen I suggested more certainty on another aspect of the guidance (ie the use of "should"). Your post articulates a very useful suggestion on this topic, but if there is no interest in adopting what is suggested on this thread it is not going to achieve anything. I will stop there for fear of being deemed to have moved off topic.

[tjh290633]

An observation here. Presumably the LSE and its information source are calculating the yield on the FTSE100 by taking the total dividends received in the past year and dividing that by the market capitalisation of the FTSE100.

It may be stating the blindingly obvious but, if the larger companies continue to pay dividends and the smaller ones in the Index cease, or reduce theirs, this will lead to a much higher yield than the ordinary punter can hope to achieve in a nominally equally weighted portfolio. We know that two (or three) of the largest companies have reduced their dividends (RDSA/B and BP.) and many of the smaller ones have reduced theirs. However most of the heavyweight companies have continued or even increased their dividends. My own portfolio shows a marked divergence between Median and Mean yield from its 36 constituents, and a forecast yield on what we know now slightly above the mean and somewhat below the median.

I have 10 companies not paying dividends and 3 which have reduced their payouts (RDSB, BP. and IMB). I am therefore wondering whether the median or mean yield of the 101 constituents might not be a better measure. Presumably this data is available somewhere.

TJH

[Alaric]

Presumably the LSE and its information source are calculating the yield on the FTSE100 by taking the total dividends received in the past year and dividing that by the market capitalisation of the FTSE100.

We haven't yet had twelve months of dividend cuts and cancellations, so the retrospective yield as described calculated on an annual basis is currently a misleading guide to what might be expected in the future. Quarterly figures, or at least a proxy for them, can be obtained from the announced distributions of the several FTSE 100 tracker ETFs.

[Itsallaguess]

I find it odd that you should be using a "historic" yield as a means to determine future yields, full stop. So such a route can only be seen as desirable in the absence of any commonly accessible, and trustworthy alternative for future yields. (The data sources I use fail those tests).

I'm not sure of your point there to be honest. You seem to be saying that the use of a historic metric isn't ideal, but then seem to agree that there isn't a more suitable alternative that's widely accessible to all, but it's the 'wider access' issue that's specifically being discussed here, so in the absence of a more suitable metric, then perhaps a slightly less suitable one might be better than none at all, given that the 'none at all' situation is the situation currently being discussed as perhaps not being particularly helpful for those who might look at the current 'greater than the yield of the FTSE 100 index' statement and think that in the absence of *any* agreed data-set that actually gives a figure at all, it's then a relatively subjective view depending on how someone might frame the answer...

Secondly it is again intuitively odd that in determining a threshold for High Yield candidates you would be using a method for deriving some kind of "average" or "benchmark" yield and then subtracting from it. I appreciate you are calling this a "floor", but were I pursuing candidates for High Yield (regardless of the strategy, and its rules/guidelines) I would be trying to establish that benchmark and adding to it.

Even from a Board Guideline perspective, and a desire to limit the "pointless" discussions around "off-topic" I would imagine having a lower than average benchmark, even as a floor, would only encourage such "off-topic" accusations.

Well something would only be 'off-topic' if any particular solution to this issue wasn't actively incorporated into the guidelines, and so a thread started to specifically discuss the potential for additional clarity might be assumed to either result in that additional clarity or not, and so I'm not sure it would be appropriate to claim such 'off-topic' potential at this early stage of such a discussion..

On your point regarding your own views on 'pursuing potential candidates' for High Yield investing, then I agree that we've probably all got different and often slightly conflicting views on how we might go about things, but I'm not sure it's all that helpful to start considering such differences when the primary goal of this thread is to simply ask the single, simple question that if the current HYP Practical Guidelines specifically state 'greater than the yield of the FTSE 100 index', then how might a newcomer go about finding that guideline level of yield, from a standing start, by which to cover off that particular statement.

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[Gengulphus]

No, it was not seeing the world through my own prism. There were endless "should one use a HYP strategy or not?" arguments at the time on the TMF board, which spread on to most threads no matter what their subject was supposed to be, and many other people regarded it as disruptive, including the TMF moderators.
Gengulphus

That is your recollection but it isn't mine.

Yes, there were some "should one use a HYP strategy or not?" arguments. But there were plenty more nuanced discussions about the suitability of investment trusts, what Doris was all about, buying the odd foreign shares and slightly lower yielding shares, etc, etc. These tended to get leapt on by the purists and reported to the TMF moderators, who sometimes stepped in for a quiet life on the board. Basically they were breaking up quarrels between opposing views, rather than taking sides. The situation wasn't that different to the multiplicity of arguments we get on TLF. For you to attribute a single to view to the TMF moderators on the matter is over-simplistic.

I didn't say that the TMF moderators were taking sides, just that they regarded what was happening as highly disruptive. The quarrels between opposing views that they were breaking up were that disruption! And the fact that they eventually went beyond their usual measures of deleting posts and posting 'thread-stoppers' (the nearest measure to locking a thread that they had) and split the board shows that they regarded it as more-than-normally disruptive.

More specifically, it wasn't the quarrels themselves that they regarded as disruptive, but the fact that they were intruding into threads about the practicalities of running a HYP. The evidence for that is that the guidance they provided for the High Yield - HYP Practical and High Yield - Shares & Strategies boards after the split made it pretty clear that "should one use a HYP strategy or not?" were not welcome on the former (see its sections 2 and 3) and were welcome on the latter (see its section 2). If they'd regarded the quarrels themselves as disruptive, they would have disallowed them completely - as it was, they simply split the original High Yield Portfolio board to allow the quarrels to continue as long as their participants wanted them to but also create a board on which they were forbidden so that they didn't disrupt discussion of HYP practicalities.

I will add that I had various private email exchanges with the three TMF moderators discussing the problems they were having (i.e. not just "we've moderated your post" emails), so my recollection is based on more than just what was visible on the boards. Indeed, I might even still have the emails concerned somewhere on an old backup - but I'm not going to go looking for them because (a) it would be a lot of work; (b) I'm uncertain whether they'll be there at all; (c) being private emails, even if I found them, I wouldn't be willing to post them.

Finally, I think this aside from the thread topic has gone far enough, so this is my last contribution to the aside.

Gengulphus

[Gengulphus]

for ordinary users, the purpose of board guidance is to guide them as to what's on-topic for the board, and IMHO the test against the FTSE100 yield is currently instead guiding them into arguing about whether shares are on-topic on the board...

It's difficult to disagree with that Gengulphus.

In an ideal world it would probably be 'a good thing' to be able to have a definitive data-source for a 'HYP yield floor' to be able to point at, but it's clear both from this thread and the many that have come before it on this topic that as things stand, that sought-after data-source simply doesn't exist as far as we're aware, and is frankly very unlikely to, given the swift variations in the necessary underlying data..

But even with the above said, one of the main things the current HYP Practical Guidance is trying to achieve overall is to build in some welcome flexibility for both posters and moderators, and generally position itself quite rightly as a guide for the 'spirit of the HYP Practical rules' rather than be overly prescriptive and dogmatic, and so maybe finding some sort of sweet-spot between declaring an 'acceptable yield-floor' that is not too high so as to then both unnecessarily restrict candidate-choice, and (worse, in my opinion...) perhaps even regularly drive investors towards the 'riskier end' of the yield-spectrum, and finding one that is 'not too low' so as to make the idea that potential HYP candidates might clearly struggle to be called 'High Yield' candidates in the first place, might be the sort of end-goal that would perhaps satisfy your hope for clearer guidance in this area, whilst still maintaining the overarching aim of maintaining a good level of flexibility in the HYP Practical guidance itself.

I don't disagree with that aim of producing "some welcome flexibility for both posters and moderators", and your suggestion (omitted from the material I quoted for brevity) of the London Stock Exchange / FTSE Russell / FT figure minus a percentage point sounds reasonable at present. But it still comes up with a precise numerical limit, and appears rather inflexible - it's only the word often-overlooked word "should" that indicates any flexibility. There is also the issue that if dividends are recovering quickly in a year or two's time (a big "if", I know!), the historical nature of that figure may work in the opposite direction to at present, making it rather unrealistically low as a "high-yield floor" rather than rather unrealistically high as it is at present - and deducting a percentage point from it will exacerbate that lowness rather than counteracting it...

As I said in my OP, my preferred answer to "what is the FTSE 100 yield?" (for the purposes of the HYP guidelines) is something along "there are indicative sources, but not definitive ones. Accept that it's valid to view as high any yield that's in the same ballpark as any of the indicative answers or higher." lines. The "in the same ballpark ... or higher" part of that gives some flexibility to go a bit below the numerical values in the indicative sources, and the "Accept that it's valid to view ..." part basically says that even though a user might not regard any particular company's yield as high, they should accept that it's OK for other users to regard one that passes that test as high and to post about a company with that yield (provided of course that the company also passes the other guidance tests).

There is of course the question of just what "in the same ballpark" means - i.e. how much below the indicative answer the yield can go and still be just "a bit below" it. But I think the answer to that should be left unstated - the message should be that if you post about a company whose yield is below the lowest of the indicative answers, one is taking a risk that one's post will be moderated, and the further below it is, the greater that risk.

Gengulphus

[Gengulphus]

Secondly it is again intuitively odd that in determining a threshold for High Yield candidates you would be using a method for deriving some kind of "average" or "benchmark" yield and then subtracting from it. I appreciate you are calling this a "floor", but were I pursuing candidates for High Yield (regardless of the strategy, and its rules/guidelines) I would be trying to establish that benchmark and adding to it.

Even from a Board Guideline perspective, and a desire to limit the "pointless" discussions around "off-topic" I would imagine having a lower than average benchmark, even as a floor, would only encourage such "off-topic" accusations.

Well something would only be 'off-topic' if any particular solution to this issue wasn't actively incorporated into the guidelines, and so a thread started to specifically discuss the potential for additional clarity might be assumed to either result in that additional clarity or not, and so I'm not sure it would be appropriate to claim such 'off-topic' potential at this early stage of such a discussion..

That ignores the sentence "Discussion of these rules is NOT permitted here, but can be raised in the Biscuit Bar." in the current HYP Practical guidance, which indicates that discussions about it should come over here to the Biscuit Bar. And at least with regard to discussing potential changes to it, my view is that that's thoroughly sensible, because those with little active interest in such a discussion are likely to (a) be irritated by having to skim over it; (b) be left with a number of 'I read somewhere that the guidance says ...' impressions due to not paying enough attention to whether what they saw during their skimming is about what the guidance is, about how someone thinks it ought to be interpreted, or about what someone thinks the guidance should be.

Incidentally, those problems are worst when such discussions intrude into threads about HYP practicalities. If discussions about the HYP Practical guidance had threads of their own on HYP Practical, clearly labelled in their subject as being about the guidance, they would be much less problematic, because those with little active interest in such discussions probably wouldn't read them at all and so would be much less likely to be irritated or confused by them. So I wouldn't see any real objection to discussing the guidance on HYP Practical itself, as long as it was confined to clearly-labelled threads of its own. Those writing the guidance might well have a problem with doing it that way, though, because the bit of the guidance allowing such discussion would be considerably longer and more complicated than "Discussion of these rules is NOT permitted here, but can be raised in the Biscuit Bar."!

Gengulphus

[MrFoolish]

I didn't say that the TMF moderators were taking sides, just that they regarded what was happening as highly disruptive. The quarrels between opposing views that they were breaking up were that disruption! And the fact that they eventually went beyond their usual measures of deleting posts and posting 'thread-stoppers' (the nearest measure to locking a thread that they had) and split the board shows that they regarded it as more-than-normally disruptive.
Gengulphus

I feel you have missed the point. The quarrels were often precipitated by certain elements who would object to posts they felt were outside their own strict view of how HYPs should be operated. I've witnessed various posters feeling hounded out (and eventually disappear) because they dared to add an IT to their HYP. A bit of live-and-let-live would have avoided many of the quarrels (and consequential disruption) in the first place.