James Anderson of Scottish Mortgage Paper

[Aminatidi]

James Anderson's comments on Warren Buffett have got a two page spread in the Times this morning and picking up Lootman's theme, Anderson commented that it was profoundly depressing that he could find so few British companies to invest in. SMT has only one UK investment, Transferwise, an unlisted money transfer business based in London.

Apparently the value of the entire universe of UK listed companies is now less than Amazon and Alphabet combined. I am not knocking the UK just mentioning what is in the article.

Of course not all of us are looking for growth companies but clearly for many this is the only way to go. If I were working and building a nest egg for future retirement I know that I would not be building it through setting up a HYP!

Dod

I'm looking for somewhere to (re) park 5% or so of my investment pot and SMT always appeals and is one I held before and sole at the start of "the drop" assuming it would go the same way big-time so took a decent profit from holding for a very short time.

Must admit I'm tempted to take another look as it does seem to have weathered recent events almost too well.

Then again you could probably say that about almost anything from Baillie Gifford.

[mc2fool]

Apparently the value of the entire universe of UK listed companies is now less than Amazon and Alphabet combined. I am not knocking the UK just mentioning what is in the article.

That's really more to do with the size of the 21st century mega monopolies. Take a look at the holdings of the Vanguard FTSE All World tracker, VWRL. https://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/inve ... folio-data

US       56.8%
Japan     7.7%
China     4.6%
UK        4.4%

Microsoft 3.04%
Apple     2.71%
Amazon    2.32%

So just those three companies, at 8.07%, are the second largest "country" in the world, and any two of them the third.

[ADrunkenMarcus]

Apparently the value of the entire universe of UK listed companies is now less than Amazon and Alphabet combined. I am not knocking the UK just mentioning what is in the article.

His comments are sad but true.

A FTSE 100 tracker would massacre your capital. Look at how many large FTSE 100 shares are trading at multi year lows, whether it's the banks or the big oil majors. Of my direct holdings, I view AstraZeneca, Unilever and Diageo as fairly solid blue chip growth companies - and we nearly lost Unilever a few years ago - but not many of the FTSE 100 appeal otherwise. Unilever has the highest dividend yield of the three at 3.5%. They won't shoot the lights out but will, hopefully, provide a 2-3% dividend yield which grows moderately above inflation over a long period of time. And their dividend yields on book cost will surpass many HYP shares, too. However, even these companies are devoting the majority of their cash flow to dividends, presumably because they do not have the opportunity to invest that majority in growth opportunities offering the same high returns on capital.

We do have a small number of outstanding medium and smaller companies in the UK - Spirax Sarco Engineering has done great for me, trebling since purchase in 2015 and trading today near all-time highs, but it's certainly expensive.

And what about Sterling? There are all sorts of currency risks but my suspicion is the Pound will get weaker over time so holding foreign equities will give a further boost when their value is translated into a weaker currency. Same with dividends. I do not want to bring politics into this, beyond saying that I think there is a relatively high chance of a 'no deal' Brexit which would, in my opinion, lead to a substantially weaker Pound in the short to medium term at least - regardless of the pros- and cons- of such an event.

I put 45% of my SIPP into Smithson and am very glad for the foreign exposure. I want to add Scottish Mortgage too.

Best wishes

Mark.

[BrummieDave]

James Anderson's comments on Warren Buffett have got a two page spread in the Times this morning and picking up Lootman's theme, Anderson commented that it was profoundly depressing that he could find so few British companies to invest in. SMT has only one UK investment, Transferwise, an unlisted money transfer business based in London.

Apparently the value of the entire universe of UK listed companies is now less than Amazon and Alphabet combined. I am not knocking the UK just mentioning what is in the article.

Of course not all of us are looking for growth companies but clearly for many this is the only way to go. If I were working and building a nest egg for future retirement I know that I would not be building it through setting up a HYP!

Dod

I read The TImes article earlier and would recommend it; flying cars...!

[richfool]

I came across these two articles about SMT which may be of interest to SMT fans:-

From 15th May 2020 as above:

The surging share price of Scottish Mortgage (SMT), up around 23% since the end of March and the onset of the coronavirus crash has stunned many observers. The Baillie Gifford global investment trust has reached a landmark valuation of £10bn - ousting private equity giant 3i (III) as the FTSE 100’s largest fund - at a time when many stock market funds are nursing painful losses.

https://citywire.co.uk/investment-trust ... e/a1357632

and from the day before (14 May 2020)

Scottish Mortgage (SMT) has cut the value of its unquoted investments in response to the coronavirus stock market crash.

In a brief investor update, Baillie Gifford, the fund management group behind the £8.8bn global investment trust, said steep falls in public equity markets from mid-February to late March had prompted a flurry of writedowns in the ‘fair values’ of its holdings in unlisted technology and life sciences companies.

It did not disclose which of its 41 unquoted investments had been written down other than to say ‘multiple’ reviews of valuations had been triggered. However, it reassured investors that the proportion of the fund’s assets in unlisted companies had remained steady at just under 20%, within a 25% limit set by its board, as the decline in the private equity assets reflected the fall in the listed stocks that make up the bulk of the portfolio

.
https://citywire.co.uk/investment-trust ... h/a1346618

[richfool]

James Anderson's comments on Warren Buffett have got a two page spread in the Times this morning and picking up Lootman's theme, Anderson commented that it was profoundly depressing that he could find so few British companies to invest in. SMT has only one UK investment, Transferwise, an unlisted money transfer business based in London.

Apparently the value of the entire universe of UK listed companies is now less than Amazon and Alphabet combined. I am not knocking the UK just mentioning what is in the article.

Of course not all of us are looking for growth companies but clearly for many this is the only way to go. If I were working and building a nest egg for future retirement I know that I would not be building it through setting up a HYP!

Dod

I'm looking for somewhere to (re) park 5% or so of my investment pot and SMT always appeals and is one I held before and sole at the start of "the drop" assuming it would go the same way big-time so took a decent profit from holding for a very short time.

Must admit I'm tempted to take another look as it does seem to have weathered recent events almost too well.

Then again you could probably say that about almost anything from Baillie Gifford.

I was just looking at the holdings of SMT and also Monks, which lead me to conclude that Monks could well be a suitable alternative to SMT, as Monks has slightly lower stakes in the major technology stocks and thus should involve less risk and volatility.

Monks holds Amazon, Alphabet, Alibaba and MS in its top ten holdings. SMT holds larger positions in those same stocks though not Alphabet, but plus Tesla and Tencent.

USA is another thought, which I recently bought into. (USA = Baillie Gifford US Growth trust). It holds larger positions than Monks, but smaller than SMT, in: Amazon, Tesla and Alphabet of the above stocks.

[bluedonkey]

Yes, I think of Monks as a more conservative version of SMT.

[oldapple]

I invested a small amount in SMT through AJ Bell and received two invitations to webinars, the first with Tom Slater last week and the second tomorrow at 12 noon with James Anderson.

https://bailliegifford.zoom.us/j/921924 ... wifQ%3D%3D

Unfortunately I have no idea if the above link is of any use, but last week's zoom session was quite easy to watch on my iPad. Perhaps it is not too late to investigate registration if you are an investor.

[BrummieDave]

I invested a small amount in SMT through AJ Bell and received two invitations to webinars, the first with Tom Slater last week and the second tomorrow at 12 noon with James Anderson.

https://bailliegifford.zoom.us/j/921924 ... wifQ%3D%3D

Unfortunately I have no idea if the above link is of any use, but last week's zoom session was quite easy to watch on my iPad. Perhaps it is not too late to investigate registration if you are an investor.

I watched the one last week with Tom Slater (sporting a lockdown beard) and it was very good; he came across as thoughtful, measured, and just the kind of bloke you'd trust with your hard earned...

[oldapple]

I watched the one last week with Tom Slater (sporting a lockdown beard) and it was very good; he came across as thoughtful, measured, and just the kind of bloke you'd trust with your hard earned...

I was impressed too that he would not be drawn in to critisizing companies they were not invested in.