The 2020s

[BusyBumbleBee]

The other big trend, in the developed World at least, is an ageing demographic. This will mean healthcare providers will have a tail-wind and investments in Pharma, replacement body parts, leisure companies etc should do well if picked up at a good price.

Did you really mean to say replacement body parts will do well if picked up at a good price?

I need...

[dealtn]

Good morning,

The 2020s are coming.

Which, and how many, of your individual holdings (i.e. shares, investment trusts) do you expect you’ll still hold in 2030?

Hopefully none, but experience suggests that won't be the case. Without calculating I would think my average hold time would be about 5 years, so I would expect to be holding between 25-50% of them.

Now if I only knew which ones they would be now, or more importantly which ones I would have sold, this game would be a lot easier!

[Bubblesofearth]

The other big trend, in the developed World at least, is an ageing demographic. This will mean healthcare providers will have a tail-wind and investments in Pharma, replacement body parts, leisure companies etc should do well if picked up at a good price.

Did you really mean to say replacement body parts will do well if picked up at a good price?

I need...

haha, well yes there is certainly going to be the demand. I recently joined a seniors golf group and the number of knee, hip etc operations surprised me.

SN. would be one company worth keeping a replacement eye on...

[ADrunkenMarcus]

Thanks for all the detailed replies, this is an interesting discussion and I know I will want to get back to some of the responses.

I was giving some thought to my holdings, with a view to what the 2020s might hold for them (ignoring the known unknowns!)

Investment Trusts:
Acorn Income Fund (2013)
Murray International (2012)

I hope to hold both - Acorn to give me geared UK exposure and continue to provide a good income; Murray to continue to form the core of my dividend portfolio, giving me a diversified exposure to global, value equities and emerging markets.

Unit Trusts:
M&G Recovery (1993)
Marlborough Multi Cap UK Income (2011)

I hope to hold both - hoping that M&G Recovery will perform better in the next decade than the last one (it can't do much worse); and that Marlborough can continue its decent track record, giving me income producing UK equity exposure.

Shares:
AstraZeneca (1998)
I hope it will benefit from an ageing population and decent sales from its blockbuster drugs, after a rather barren decade.

Diageo (1998)
I hope Diageo will continue to benefit from spirit premiumisation and growth in emerging markets.

Diploma (2012)
Diploma has done very well for me, operating under the radar and fulfilling companies' mundane, recurring needs for parts. Its health business may benefit from ageing population.

Dominos Pizza Group (2010)
DP Poland (2010)
I expect people will still be eating pizza in 2030. I hope Domino's has enough of a brand to distinguish itself - I think pizza is somewhat different, even as things like Uber Eats and Just Eat take a share of Indian, Chinese and other takeaways. And I hope DP Poland has had a successful roll-out by then!

Kone (2017) (Finland)
Kone should benefit from its strong positions in growth markets, recurring revenues from its installed elevator and equipment base, and increasing urbanisation.

MasterCard (2019) (United States)
85% of payment transactions are in cash, but the non-cash segment is growing; payments will grow; and I hope MasterCard benefits from its network effect and ongoing technological investment. An inflation hedge, too.

Reckitt Benckiser (2011)
Its health business may benefit from ageing population. And Durex will stop the population getting too big!

Renishaw (2011)
A good long term hold for me, with lots of R&D investment and precision products which are highly sought after. Its health business may benefit from ageing population.

Rotork (2015)
I hope Rotork's recent recovery continues and demand for flow controls etc. is strong in the years ahead.

Spirax Sarco Engineering (2015)
Its steam pump and other products should benefit from growth in its global markets, trends such as increased need for thermal efficiency and its close relationships with customers will hopefully enable its long term record to continue.

Standard Chartered (1998)
I hope it continues its recent recovery and benefits from wealth creation and demand for banking services in Asia and the EMs. If not, it'll be fix or be fixed!

Unilever (2013)
I hope Unilever continues its move into beauty and successfully adapts to digitalisation and all the challenges being thrown at it. Its long term position in EM should stand it in good stead, I hope.

Victrex (2015)
I hope it benefits from its recent capital investment and that its mega programmes take off in the 2020s. Its health related products may benefit from ageing population.

Best wishes

Mark.

[Urbandreamer]

PEEK makers?

[Wisper mode]The future is plastics.[/Wisper mode]

[JoyofBricks8]

I see we have a few believers in the wishful thinking of the UN population projections showing a tailing off of the increase- with population eventually peaking. This is a convenient political narrative but seems rather unlikely on past history.

I challenge them to produce evidence that population is not increasing geometrically over time. It may be increasing at a lower rate currently, but it most certainly is not a linear function: I can point to a millennium of data that when graphed looks a lot like an exponent.

Let’s see their evidence for inability for the geometrical increase of population.

Currently there are few if any resource constraints preventing exponential global population growth anywhere on the globe: hunger is solved, medicine is winning against disease. I am of the opinion the oil supply might be a limiting factor ultimately but thus far supply has ultimately outstripped demand.

So you need to do far better than spout the platitudes of the UN to make an argument for an end to geometric human population increase. It ain’t happening under current conditions.

[Steveam]

JoB: Why be so aggressive?

I do like the UN data sets and they are certainly better than the graph fit approach. They’re based on data consequences rather than projecting graph trends.

The real question with the UN conclusion is why do they come to this conclusion? There are a number of reasons but the key is “peak child” - the proportion of under 15s in the world population has dropped for a number of decades and this will, in due course, lead to a stabilisation of world population (which, of course, is still rising as we get increased longevity and better health care). The world population is ageing.

https://www.gapminder.org/news/world-pe ... en-is-now/

I think one needs to probe further and ask why and where there are fewer children. Although the reasons are multifarious it seems that when child mortality drops and people get richer they have fewer children, that educating women reduces the birth rate, that wealth reduces birth rate, ...

I’m not suggesting for a moment that a stabilisation of world population will solve many of the world's problems - it can easily be argued that our current population is already too high. Also transitioning to an old population maybe dislocating (Japan was already rich when it became old but, for example, China could become old before it becomes rich.)

Some of the late Hans Rosling’s videos (YouTube) are very revealing of our (Western) outdated data and beliefs.

Even quite poor African countries are showing drop in the birth rate as they get richer.

Best wishes and happy new year.

Steve

[Bubblesofearth]

I challenge them to produce evidence that population is not increasing geometrically over time. It may be increasing at a lower rate currently, but it most certainly is not a linear function:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonmoore ... 2de3386469

If you look at the table of yearly change in population you will see it has been around 80 million for over two decades.

Birth rates have been falling and the main reason for continued projected increases has to do with still falling death rates.

What happens from here is of course anyones guess but the current trend in population growth is clearly linear.

BoE

[Bubblesofearth]

Sorry, wrong link in previous post. This is the one intended;

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

BoE

[SalvorHardin]

Expect to still be holding in 2030:

Canadians – Brookfield Asset Management, IMHO very much like a younger Berkshire Hathaway. Brookfield is a major player in global infrastructure, both as an owner and as asset manager for its many clients through its various quoted and unquoted funds.

Canadian Pacific. All North American railroads have a colossal moat, especially those like CP which connect to the Pacific Coast (longer distances travelled so a bigger moat against trucks than the East Coast rails). Investors need to accept the cyclical nature of the business (and thus share prices); either be good at market timing or hold through the falls.

Americans – Berkshire Hathaway. Disney, the number one entertainment company on the planet, superb brands, ability to cross-sell via its many outlets, especially its theme parks (Netflix can't do that). Union Pacific (see Canadian Pacific).

British – Smith & Nephew, which IMHO is a better play on the increasing demand for healthcare than the pharmaceuticals with their highly manipulated “core earnings”. Also Diageo and Unilever which are well covered on TLF.

Probably still holding (60%-ish) in 2030:

Americans – Mondelez International. The number one global snacking company (this is where Cadburys ended up).

Madison Square Garden, with its superb trophy assets of The New York Knicks (basketball) and New York Rangers (ice hockey). Unfortunately televised ratings for basketball have fallen sharply recently, in part because the NBA has a PR disaster on its hands having grovelled to the Chinese government, following a tweet from the general manager of the Houston Rockets in which he supported the Kong Kong protesters (story below). MSG has also made a big investment in building arenas in Las Vegas and London (the MSG Spheres), which makes it riskier and thus a weaker hold than it used to be.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-49995985

British – Capital and Counties, Derwent London, Great Portland Estates, Shaftesbury (all four are Central London commercial property companies). Central London IMHO will be the place to invest in commercial property once Brexit deal uncertainty has been resolved and Crossrail has opened.

Expect to have sold in the 2020s:

Americans – Lions Gate Entertainment. This is a big punt on the consolidation of the streaming market as the medium sized players look to make themselves bigger to compete against Disney and Netflix. Lions Gate is currently valued at $2.1 billion; earlier this year it turned down a $5 billion bid from CBS for its main subsidiary “Starz”. I'd be surprised if I still owned these in 2021.

British – National Grid, which is becoming more exposed to an increasingly hostile regulatory environment both in the UK and East Coast America.

Burberry; the British luxury goods company will make a nice acquisition for one of the luxury majors, e.g. LVMH. I expect a takeover bid sometime in the 2020s.

Big trends for the 2020s:

Demographics (ageing population means more healthcare demand).

Growth of the middle class in the developing world (very good for Diageo and Unilever).

Pushback against fossil fuels and towards renewables. Renewables are not in my circle of competence, and nowadays I avoid oil companies (which are in my circle of competence thanks to many years in companies like Soco International). Brookfield and Berkshire Hathaway are quite big in renewables, so I've got some exposure there.

Increasing dominance of their markets by the big technology companies, ending when they are restrained / broken up by governments. This may still be very good for investors. Standard Oil is a great example of the possible benefits to investors when a dominant company is broken up, producing more innovation. Tech like this is outside my circle of competence, so I delegate this sector to investment trust managers.

Finally, Investment trusts. Probably have kept most of them (15 different holdings). The ones which will be the least likely to be sold are the family investment trusts where the family is still heavily involved (thus providing both monitoring and a longer-term outlook): Brunner, Caledonia Investments and RIT Capital Partners.

[flyer61]

Well having avoided (for now) the apocalypse of a hard left Government and knowing I will retire from formal work in the next decade it has certainly made me stop and think. Living in the north of England it is reassuring though that for the next 5 years I am surrounded by Toffs and Billionaires!

Heavily exposed to the 'British state', State pension, DB pensions, SIPP, ISA, VCT's, UK limited Companies (property). Not to worried about the Tories however a future Labour government could really upset the cart. They are not changing their recent spots anytime soon. RLB - Wrong daily is cut from Marxist cloth even Starmer is reaching out to Momentum (why not give them a kicking, the rest of the population did).

OK rant over, they are not going to be calling the shots anytime soon and I need to chill out a little. Whats on the buying list.....

Diamonds - my wife has permission to buy more of them She has trained herself on how to assess them and then buy at sensible prices. She gets the pleasure and I get something mobile. Quality is what we are after...

More ETFs - so VMID, my hunch is the Tories are going to borrow bucket loads and this will feed into UK facing Companies. VWRL - the daddy of ETFs, this should be a core holding for all. Hope to keep adding, particularly on any pull backs. Looking at a purely tech ETF as well.

Investment trusts - Caledonia CLDN again if it appears on 'offer' I will pick up more.

Fundsmith - monthly standing order.

Wife's SIPP - hi yield - work to continue on in identifying assets that pay a high yield that is sustainable. Happy to take 'calculated' chances. Recent purchase 'Corecivic'. Mrs Warren would like it closed down so the price has come down a long way yet the business is growing, profitable with a covered 10% dividend. Many people are squeamish about investing here even the US banks think twice about dealing with them. The bet - Democrat leadership sees what happened to JC and his merry band of losers and decide against a 'radical' presidential candidate in 2020. Lot of upside for Corecivic with that threat removed. Of course might fall flat on my face....

Travel - lots of it, need sunshine and a bit of sea fishing. Oh and have a book to write....going to be a busy decade!

Happy new year to all Fools and thank you for all you bring to these forums.

[Lootman]

British – Smith & Nephew, which IMHO is a better play on the increasing demand for healthcare than the pharmaceuticals with their highly manipulated “core earnings”. Also Diageo and Unilever which are well covered on TLF.

Yes, S&N is one of the very few FTSE-100 companies I like (Unilever and Diageo are the others). The only HYP-type share I hold is Royal Dutch. I find UK small and medium caps much more interesting and rewarding.

But if you like S&N have you looked at the big US medical equipment makers? I agree that is a more promising healthcare area than pharma, and I also hold Medtronic and Abbot Labs. There is also the US ETF symbol IHI which has those plus Thermo-Fisher, Danaher, Stryker, Becton Dickinson, Baxter etc.

S&N will probably get bought out in the next decade which will provide a boost. I agree Burberry will fall as well, but maybe to a Chinese upstart? It's already a play on Asia.

[AsleepInYorkshire]

Mark, if I will survive until 2030 & I shall only be 97. I expect to have moved into ITs before then, although I'm in no hurry to do so.

I expect that some of my 35 shares will have gone by then, due to takeover or amalgamation. I might have gained others through demergers. If I were to add another holding, I think that PHP, Primary Health Properties, would be a likely candidate. Will Aviva stick or twist? Will someone snaffle Marston's? It's anybody's guess.

TJH

Happy New Year young man

I would suggest you begin saving for your centenary as it's customary to have a lavish party with dancing until the early hours and invite all your TLF friends. (My bad )

AiYn'U

[SalvorHardin]

But if you like S&N have you looked at the big US medical equipment makers? I agree that is a more promising healthcare area than pharma, and I also hold Medtronic and Abbot Labs. There is also the US ETF symbol IHI which has those plus Thermo-Fisher, Danaher, Stryker, Becton Dickinson, Baxter etc.

S&N will probably get bought out in the next decade which will provide a boost. I agree Burberry will fall as well, but maybe to a Chinese upstart? It's already a play on Asia.

I've owned Becton Dickinson in the past. Sold them a few years ago when I decided to reduce my number of holdings quite drastically (60 holdings in early 2010, I'm now down to 32). Should have held onto them though...

As long as I've owned S&N it has been the subject of takeover rumours! Good point about Burberry, it is very popular brand in The Far East.

[Spet0789]

I see we have a few believers in the wishful thinking of the UN population projections showing a tailing off of the increase- with population eventually peaking. This is a convenient political narrative but seems rather unlikely on past history.

I challenge them to produce evidence that population is not increasing geometrically over time. It may be increasing at a lower rate currently, but it most certainly is not a linear function: I can point to a millennium of data that when graphed looks a lot like an exponent.

Let’s see their evidence for inability for the geometrical increase of population.

Currently there are few if any resource constraints preventing exponential global population growth anywhere on the globe: hunger is solved, medicine is winning against disease. I am of the opinion the oil supply might be a limiting factor ultimately but thus far supply has ultimately outstripped demand.

So you need to do far better than spout the platitudes of the UN to make an argument for an end to geometric human population increase. It ain’t happening under current conditions.

Geometric (or rather exponential) increase of population leading to a catastrophe was first proposed by Malthus in 1792 and has been bouncing about since then as a theory. We’ve survived so far.

[tjh290633]

Mark, if I will survive until 2030 & I shall only be 97. I expect to have moved into ITs before then, although I'm in no hurry to do so.

I expect that some of my 35 shares will have gone by then, due to takeover or amalgamation. I might have gained others through demergers. If I were to add another holding, I think that PHP, Primary Health Properties, would be a likely candidate. Will Aviva stick or twist? Will someone snaffle Marston's? It's anybody's guess.

TJH

Happy New Year young man

I would suggest you begin saving for your centenary as it's customary to have a lavish party with dancing until the early hours and invite all your TLF friends. (My bad )

AiYn'U

If all goes well I'll see you at the Clachan in 2033.

TJH

[Spet0789]

I agree with much which has been said. My tip for the 2020s is very 1890s - copper.

Quite undersupplied and the penetration of electrics and electronics in the economy is only going one way.

I own Central Asia Metals (CAML), a base metals company with a bottom quintile cost of production and really excellent management who seem very investor friendly.

Happy New Year all.

Just think... this time next year we could be on the brink of a WTO crash out. Plus ca change.

[GeoffF100]

I cannot really look ahead 10 years, but I do have a 5 year plan. My main objective is to reduce my exposure to tax, particularly if we get a government that is hungry for my money.

My circumstances have changed since I retired twenty years ago. My pensions were not in payment then, and I needed income. There were no cheap index trackers in those days. I built up an income generating portfolio of directly held UK shares. That made sense then.

My pensions are now in payment and I have quadrupled my money. The tax man is starting to salivate. I have been shaving down my income portfolio within my CGT allowance, but progress has been slow. I need to speed that up, and get rid of that portfolio.

A problem here is finding a home for the cash that I am raising. I cannot think of anything better than proliferating even more bank and building society bonds guaranteed by the FSCS.

I have been steadily reducing my UK equity exposure and building up my overseas exposure using Vanguard trackers. I have 33% UK equity and 67% overseas. I aim to reduce the UK equity to 25%, as a single tracker fund in my ISA. I also want to get my emerging market tracker into my ISA.

By the end of this tax year, I should have moved all my index linked gilts out of tax shelters and replaced them with equities. I have replaced the index linked gilts with an unsheltered index linked gilt holding with a running yield of 0.1%, so there is not much tax to pay on that.

After that? I do not know.

[JoyofBricks8]

JoB: Why be so aggressive?

I do like the UN data sets and they are certainly better than the graph fit approach. They’re based on data consequences rather than projecting graph trends.

The real question with the UN conclusion is why do they come to this conclusion? There are a number of reasons but the key is “peak child” - the proportion of under 15s in the world population has dropped for a number of decades and this will, in due course, lead to a stabilisation of world population (which, of course, is still rising as we get increased longevity and better health care). The world population is ageing.

https://www.gapminder.org/news/world-pe ... en-is-now/

I think one needs to probe further and ask why and where there are fewer children. Although the reasons are multifarious it seems that when child mortality drops and people get richer they have fewer children, that educating women reduces the birth rate, that wealth reduces birth rate, ...

I’m not suggesting for a moment that a stabilisation of world population will solve many of the world's problems - it can easily be argued that our current population is already too high. Also transitioning to an old population maybe dislocating (Japan was already rich when it became old but, for example, China could become old before it becomes rich.)

Some of the late Hans Rosling’s videos (YouTube) are very revealing of our (Western) outdated data and beliefs.

Even quite poor African countries are showing drop in the birth rate as they get richer.

Best wishes and happy new year.

Steve

So today we have more children than ever before.

They have less chance of dying before sexual maturity than ever before.

Yet the UN is happy to estimate that in 30 years time there will be fewer kids, because for the last few years they reckon less kids have issued because of a recent trend?

And I am supposed to find that reassuring?

What if that trend is just a fad?

I am sorry. I just can’t see a wealthier world with fewer resource constraints on large families not ultimately having large families. We see the same population explosions across all species when resource constraints are removed. The classic example is yeast in a brewers vat, or deer in the absence of wolves.

My expectation is humans are not smarter than yeast, at least when it comes to controlling their reproductive urges.

The UN only promotes such reassuring myths because of fear of the backlash against entrenched interests that the actual probable trend result of a 15 billion plus population of 2100 will create.

Happily, the resulting dystopia will be neither of our problems by then: Party on, let the good times roll. Buy land. They are not making any more of it. Though if you believe St Greta, it will probably be a hundred metres underwater or more.

[Walrus101]

A very interesting thread. For me, 2020 brings the prospect of a major life change as I retire and live on a combination of employment related pensions and my SIPP/ISA portfolio. My ISA/SIPP investments will fund discretionary spending and I intend to make the very most of it for the next ten years or so. As long as my health holds up in fact.

I have moved my investments from almost 100% in Fundsmith, Smithson, Blue Whale and Hurricane Energy to about 40% in the following pre-Boris bounce purchases which I think I will be holding long term. Having bought on a value/high yield basis I have locked into yields typically in the 6 to 8% range. So, unless something bad happens, I can't see me selling in hurry -

Shell
Petrofac
Legal and General
Lloyds
HSBC
Regional REIT
and a rather small holding in Octopus Renewables IT.

From the income paid by those firms I hope to have many holidays and generally enjoy myself for as long as the income and my health prevails. Good luck for 2020 and beyond.

Personally I'd be tempted to double the amount of holdings but I like the selection