Category: Stock market

Good News – Shares Are Getting Cheaper!

Yes the markets are plummeting, but that’s surely good news. It means you can buy the profits and cash flow that companies generate at lower prices! But the irrationality of investors and their tendency to follow the herd means they often do not pay attention to this good news.

The market turmoil at present is simply one of those sell-offs where investors think that sentiment has turned and it might be a good time to realise some profits. But the projections for the earnings of companies have not changed, nor for the dividends they might be paying in future.

The stocks that have been badly hit are those where the earnings are non-existent and the cash flow negative. In other words, those where growth in revenue is expected sooner or later to generate some profits. Or where speculators are playing a game of “pass the parcel” where they hope to sell to a bigger fool.

So here’s a few companies that suffered today of that ilk: Blue Prism (down 6%), Purplebricks (down 7%), LoopUp (down 7%), FairFX (down 7%), Wey Education (down 14%). These are not necessarily bargains yet as confidence in their future is everything when evaluating such businesses and confidence is fast evaporating from investor sentiment.

What should one do when the market is falling? One thing to bear in mind is that you can never know how far the market will fall, or when it might start to recover. Don’t try is my answer. Just follow the trend – the trend is your friend as the old saying goes (author unknown). In other words, you should not be buying when everyone else is selling because trends can persist for an unexpectedly long time. You need to wait until the market, and the individual stocks you are looking to buy, really, really do look very cheap on fundamentals. We are surely a long way from that point at present.

I shall wait to see if any bargains appear.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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The Market, Renishaw and ASOS

We seem to be in one of those markets where investors are nervous because of a few big failures, some market commentators being bearish and the uncertainties caused by Brexit. While some of the “hot” stocks continue to power upwards, and the overall market trend in the UK is still positive, it only takes the slightest ripple to cause some stocks to fall sharply. That particularly applies to those where prices seemed to have got ahead of fundamentals.

Yesterday (25/1/2108) Renishaw (RSW) issued a trading statement. The figures were positive with adjusted earnings per share for the last 6 months to end December up by 75%. Forecasts for the full year were given as profit before tax to be between £127m to £147m which on my calculations matched the consensus forecasts of analysts for the full year. The share price promptly fell by 14.5% on the day.

Why the abrupt fall then? Well another announcement on the same day from the company contained the news that Sir David McMurtry, founder and Executive Chairman (age 77) was handing over the CEO role to William Lee (age 42). But Sir David is remaining as “Executive Chairman” with responsibility for “group innovation and product strategy”. No great change in reality then! Will Lee joined the company in 1996 so the culture is not going to change is it. Perhaps investors were disappointed that Sir David is not handing over more responsibilities with a view to retiring. Who knows?

Renishaw is in the business of selling metrology products and other high-tech engineering solutions such as additive manufacturing. It has a very global spread of revenue and is benefiting from the falling pound. But it was on prospective p/e of 34 for the current year before the price fall, which is now more like 30. Perhaps investors suddenly realised that the price was high, and succession issues remained.

I have been following the bad habit over the years of selling Renishaw when I thought the price was too high, and buying it back when it retreated. That’s probably cost me a lot of money in the long term. But as the price has now fallen back to well below when I last sold some shares, I bought them back today.

Another company with a trading statement yesterday was ASOS (ASC). This is not a company I currently hold but I have briefly in the past. ASOS reported group revenue for the 4 months to end December up 30% with a particularly strong showing in the EU. Even the UK improved by 23% when most other UK general retailers are reporting dire figures. It rather demonstrates the way the market is changing with shoppers, particularly the young, moving on-line.

But they do have a few more elderly customers. For example I recently bought a fedora hat from them as I thought it interesting to try out their service. Certainly a low price and very quick delivery but otherwise unexceptional in terms of “user experience” and could even be improved.

The share price rose 3% on the day and for the current year and next the prospective p/e’s are 73 and 59. There are many on-line competitors (Boohoo is a similar one in terms of target customers which I hold), and not many barriers to entry so I find it difficult to justify such high valuations years into the future. So I think I’ll stick with shopping with them rather than buying the shares.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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Want to Get Rich Quickly?

Do you sincerely want to be rich? That was the sales slogan used by fraudster Bernie Cornfeld which attracted many. Or perhaps even better, do you want to sincerely get rich quickly? That is in essence the sales pitch used by many promoters of CFDs (Contracts for Difference).

CFDs are geared investments in stock market shares, bitcoins, commodities or any volatile instrument where you can magnify your profits many times. Or of course magnify your losses. You can, to put it simply, lose all your money and very quickly. Last week the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) wrote a stern letter to CFD distributors saying in essence that their review revealed substantial failings in the rules that they should have been following.

CFD products are complex and risky and are not suitable for inexperienced or unsophisticated investors. But 76% of retail customers for CFDs lost money in the year to June 2016 according to the FCA which clearly indicates that there are plenty of suckers out there who are being exploited. One of the many problems that the FCA discovered was inadequate client qualification with many relying on broad descriptions of “sophisticated” and “financially literate”. Indeed, they often relied solely on the client’s words about their knowledge and experience and their qualification to be classed as “elective professional” clients which effectively relieves the seller of any responsibility for the advice they give.

This problem extends not just to CFD providers but historically has been a big problem in the promotion of shares in unlisted companies, the small cap companies listed on AIM and in some overseas markets. If reliance is placed on what the client says about their competence and ability, it’s rather like asking a motorist whether they are a good driver – they will all say yes.

In essence there surely needs to be a better way to tackle this issue. If that cannot be devised then the FCA is likely to get much tougher in policing the market for CFDs.

But the FCA should not be too concerned. If those who speculate in CFDs lose the ability to do so, they’ll just move onto something else like trading in bitcoins or forex – and there are lots of promoters of those around. The problem really comes down to basic financial education. Folks need to learn at an early age that there are no quick ways to get rich. If they do not then they will fall for the latest scam regardless of the actions of regulators.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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South African Politics, Pan African Resources and Mondi

The election of Cyril Ramaphosa as the President of the ANC suggests that the country may be taking a positive step forwards. Under Jacob Zuma South Africa has become riddled with corruption and “state capture” where assets are sold off to favoured parties. Whether Cyril Ramaphosa can become President of the country in due course remains to be seen but it is worth looking at his background.

He has a legal qualification and became a trade union activist. After being active in politics, including helping to develop the “Black Economic Empowerment” policy that affects any company operating in the country, he became a businessman. Indeed he was for a time Chairman of gold miner Pan African Resources (PAF) which I held shares in for a while. This is a company registered in the UK and they hold their AGMs in London, although I don’t recall Mr Ramaphosa ever turning up for one. But with this and his other business interests he should have learned something about business to offset his left-wing sympathies.

There are of course other businesses operating in South Africa that are registered in the UK and the risk of political interference is always at the back of investors minds. One I currently hold is Mondi which is actually dual-listed on both the London and Johannesburg stock exchanges. This means it is subject to regulation in both the UK and South Africa (the South African financial regulations are actually very good), but one disadvantage is that a withholding tax is payable on dividends. It holds its AGMs in London.

Mondi (MNDI) is a paper and packaging producer with interests in many countries. Its share price does seem to be affected to some extent by political events in South Africa and one gets the impression that the valuation if slightly lower than other packaging companies for that reason (e.g. a somewhat lower prospective p/e than D.S. Smith). Goldman Sachs recently upgraded Mondi to a “buy” with a 2200 price target.

So apart from wishing Mr Ramaphosa well, investors do need to take into account the political risks of investing in South Africa. But my experience has been positive to date with the ANC seeming to take care not to damage large businesses overtly. However, the general economic trends in South Africa under Zuma have not been good even though the per capita wealth of the country at $11,300 is still the highest in Africa (excepting Mauritius).

A sound economy, rational economic policies and the rule of law are the key to generating wealth. Compare the wealth of South Africans with that of Zimbabwe where it is estimated to be as little as $200!

Perhaps the moral is that politics does matter!

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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A Cautionary Tale from Paul Scott

City AM published an educational story last week which is worth repeating. It covered the investment record of Paul Scott who is very well known in the small cap investment world. He writes very perceptive, and quick, analyses of announcements by smaller companies for Stockopedia with a strong emphasis on the financial accounts. He trained as an accountant and worked for a retailing company as finance director for some years. He then became a professional investor – one might say living off his wits – and reportedly turned £50,000 into more than £5m in a few years. Then the financial crisis hit in 2008/9.

This is what he said in the City AM interview: ““I lost the lot and had to start all over again in the financial crisis. It was horrendous, it ruined my life at the time. I had to sell my house, I lost all my savings, I ended up £2m in debt. It was a catastrophe.”

The article suggests Scott made two mistakes: “One was investing in stocks with low liquidity. The other was gearing up on them through spread-betting. When the crisis hit, he couldn’t get out.”

Now with speculative small-cap stocks again riding high, with valuations not based on current fundamentals such as profits and cash flow, but on their future prospects and for their ability to dominate their markets, it is surely again a time to be wary.

Markets are driven by emotions and once a panic sets in then small cap stocks in particular could become very illiquid. Having a major proportion of your portfolio in such stocks may have done wonders for your investment performance in the last couple of years but it is high risk. That is particularly so if you also gear up, and have an undiversified group of holdings – a portfolio of less than a dozen holdings of such companies is positively dangerous.

So the moral is surely never to hold a company on the premise that you can get out if the market turns sour for shares in that company, or in general. Unless you are sure you want to hold a company for the long term, and can afford to do so (i.e. you have not borrowed money to buy it), you should not buy it in the first place.

In addition never let a few holdings dominate your portfolio. And in particular be very wary of companies where there is little trading (i.e. low liquidity). If your own holding is a multiple of the daily trading volume, you’ll never be able to get out at a fair price if there is a crash.

This is what Paul had to say recently in an interview for Stockopedia: “I’ve learnt all my investing decisions the hard way. 2008 taught me that you need to keep an eye on the exit and you need to consider what will happen to liquidity if there is some sort of awful event. Not necessarily a minor event, but if the financial system starts to cave in again – which it might well do. So for that reason, this time my risk management is much better. I’m keeping the gearing lower than it was and I have a general rule that I want to be able to exit every position I hold within a maximum of two days in a bear market. So I position size accordingly. If something is very small and illiquid, I wouldn’t have more than £30,000 – 40,000 worth of it. If it’s nice and liquid then I’ll have £500,000 of it. I think liquidity is so important.”

I would only comment that when everyone wants to exit, shifting even a relatively small amount of stock in small caps can be damn difficult. Having solely small cap stocks in your portfolio can be a risky strategy when mid to large cap stocks will be much more liquid and less volatile. For example, private investors could easily sell their holdings in HBOS, RBS, Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley even when they were in dire difficulties.

Diversity in individual holdings, and in company size, are both prudent.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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Chancellor’s Budget and How It Affects You

What follows is a summary of Chancellor Philip Hammond’s Budget speech today, and the impact of the tax changes. Private investors were particularly concerned about the impact of tax reliefs in the VCT/EIS schemes following the Patient Capital Review but these are in fact relatively minor (see end of document).

This is a summary of the key points he announced:

  • The Chancellor said we are on the brink of a technological revolution, we must embrace it. Britain is at the forefront, but we must invest to secure it.
  • Regrettably our productivity performance remains disappointing.
  • Our debt interest is too high. OBR expects debt to peak this year and fall thereafter.
  • He maintained his commitment to fiscal responsibility but will use the headroom to prepare Britain for the future.
  • The strategy is to raise productivity and employment in all sectors of the economy. A white paper will be issued on this within a few days.
  • Following the Patient Capital Review an action plan will be published which commits to more funding of the British Business Bank, including £2.5 billion of Government seed funding (to co-invest with private firms). But there will be some restrictions on EIS tax relief (see later).
  • First year VED on cars that do not meet the latest emission standards will be increased. However there will be no “benefit in kind” from the provision of free electric charging of vehicles at work.
  • There will be more support for maths teaching including specialist schools. More maths for everyone! And there will be a tripling in the number of computing teachers. There will also be more “distance learning” support.
  • Universal credits will be paid more quickly and there will be easier access to advances to overcome complaints in this area.
  • The National Living Wage will rise by 4.4% from April (Comment: this will obviously impact employers of large numbers of low paid staff such as retailers and hospitality firms).
  • The Personal Tax Allowance will rise to £11,850 from April and the Higher Rate Threshold will also increase to £46,300, in line with inflation.
  • Taxes on beer, wine and spirits will be frozen (apart from cheap cider). A Merry Christmas to all. Fuel duty will also be frozen.
  • An additional £10 billion of capital investment will go into NHS frontline services. That includes £7.5 billion this year and next, plus there will be a review of staff pay.
  • There will be more attacks on tax evasion. In addition, the anomaly of the indexation of capital gains for companies (but not individuals) will be removed.
  • The VAT registration threshold will be reviewed but it is not intended to amend it from the current £85,000 level for at least two years.
  • There will be amendments to business rates to help smaller businesses.
  • There will be a review of international taxation arrangements. Royalties paid to low tax countries will be taxed and on-line marketplaces will be jointly liable for the sellers VAT.
  • Councils will have powers to tax empty properties, plus the Government will look at barriers to long tenancy agreements.
  • The Chancellor said house prices are getting out of reach. Successive Governments over decades have failed to meet the demand for housing (comment: surely nobody can dispute that). He committed £45 billion in capital and loans to boost the supply of skills, resources and building land. Plus there will be reforms of the planning process/laws. There will also be an inquiry into why plots with planning approval are not built.
  • Seven new town developments are planned with 1 million new homes in the Cambridge, Milton Keynes, Oxford corridor. The plan is to build 300,000 new homes per year.
  • Stamp duty will be abolished on the homes up to £300,000 in price for first time buyers and the same allowance available for homes up to £500,000 in price.

More details on taxation changes.

Changes additional to those mentioned above include:

  • The IR35 rules allowing contractors to avoid being taxed as employees may be tightened further (to follow through changes in the public sector to the private sector).
  • There will be a consultation on reform of the taxation of trusts to make them simpler, fairer and more transparent (Comment: surely a positive move).
  • Individuals operating property businesses will have the option of using mileage rates to simplify their tax affairs.
  • ISA subscription rates will remain unchanged (£20,000 for 2018-2019).
  • Lifetime allowance for pensions will be increased by inflation to £1,030,000.
  • Carried interest transitional arrangements will be removed with immediate effect (so pity those asset managers who will now pay full capital gains tax rates).
  • The restriction of relief on VCT investments sold within six months where VCTs merge will no longer apply to mergers more than two years after the subscription or where they do so only for commercial reasons. This will avoid a trap that investors can accidentally fall into.
  • VCT and EIS schemes tax relief will need to ensure they are investing in assets subject to “real risk” rather than those simply aiming for “capital preservation”. Certain “grandfathering” provisions that enable VCTs to invest funds under older rules will be removed from April 2018.
  • VCTs will need to invest 30% of new funds raised to be invested within 12 months.
  • VCTs will need to have 80% of their funds as “qualifying” investments (currently 70%) from April 2019, but they will have 12 months to reinvest the proceeds of disposals (currently 6 months). This presumably might enable them to smooth dividend payments somewhat when currently they often have to pay out the result of realisations rapidly.
  • EIS rules will double the limit on the amount an individual can subscribe in a year to £2 million, but any amount over £1 million must go into “knowledge intensive” companies. Comment: I await some simple definition of what they might be. Such companies will also have the limit on annual EIS and VCT investments raised to £10 million

I have only included what seem to be the most significant changes in the above. In general there seems to be a policy to avoid rapid and abrupt changes to taxation (which thwart people from planning their tax affairs) which is to be welcomed.

Whether the VCT and EIS tax changes will have significant impact on those vehicles remains to be seen although some of the changes had already been indicated and threats of major changes that had been rumoured seem to have been avoided. This writer expects that the managers of those funds will adapt as they have already been doing. Encouraging investment in riskier assets may increase the risk profile of those companies but might also increase the returns and a large size and diverse portfolio will provide a hedge against the risks.

The full report on the Patient Capital Review consultation has also been published and is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/661398/Patient_Capital_Review_Consultation_response_web.pdf

I may provide further comments on that after reading.

In summary I view this budget positively with no unexpected surprises or likely perverse outcomes from unintended consequences we have seen from the surprises announced by previous Chancellors. But it would be interesting to get readers comments – please add.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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Standard Life UK Smaller Companies and FRC Meetings

Yesterday I attended two meetings in the City of London. Here are brief reports on each.

Standard Life UK Smaller Companies Trust Plc (SLS) held a meeting for investors to “meet the manager” in London as their AGM was in Edinburgh this year – only about 10 people attended the latter so there were more in London. I have held this trust for some years and the manager, Harry Nimmo, who has been with the company for 33 years has been a consistently good performer. The management company has recently merged with Aberdeen and is now called Aberdeen Standard Investments but apparently there have been no significant changes internally as yet. Mr Nimmo’s comments are summarised below.

He said they have a discount control policy which is unique to UK smaller companies trusts. They buy back shares if the discount gets about 8%. The investment policy is unchanged and they are not keen on blue-sky or concept stocks. AIM is now a better place than 5 years ago as it is now more broadly based and no longer dominated by mining stocks and blue sky tech stocks.

They have put a new debt facility in place which will ultimately replace their CULS (Convertible Unsecured Loan Stock). The final date for conversion is coming up and investors need to pay attention to that as they are “well in the money”.

The trust shows a ten year CAGR dividend growth of 23.7% and the capital return since 2003 is 851% (plus dividends of course). But there have been some bear markets during his management which one needs to allow for as investors. However, if you had sold the trust after the Brexit vote you would have made a terrible mistake – the company is up 54% since June 2016.

The trust looks for companies that can grow irrespective of the economic cycle, and those with good cash flow and strong balance sheets. Mr Nimmo covered their investment process which is somewhat formulaic using a screening process (I have covered it in past articles) but they do meet investee companies twice a year. They have about 50 holdings in the fund which is a “bottom-up” stock selection actively managed fund.

He mentioned they have 10% in animal care and still hold NMC although as it is now a FTSE-100 stock they have been selling out. They still have a large holding in Abcam and have bought RWS recently. Their second largest holding is First Derivatives where most profits come from outside the UK. They generally do not hold oil/gas/mining stocks and are very light on real-estate [note: I agree with the former and many of my individual holdings overlap with the trusts but I do hold some real estate companies]. An exception though is Workspace who recently produced an excellent set of results with a rapid growth in dividends.

They have also been selling Fevertree as it exceeded 5% of their portfolio value.

I did not manage to stay until the Q&A session as I had to go to a meeting organised jointly by ShareSoc and UKSA with the Financial Reporting Council (FRC). This was a long meeting and I hope one or other organisations will produce a lengthier report on it because it was an exceedingly useful meeting. I will simply highlight a few points of particular interest.

FRC Meeting

The FRC is responsible for audit policy, standard setting and audit quality including investigation and enforcement of past transgressions. So it is a rather important body for those private investors who have come unstuck on an investment because the accounts of the company turned out to be misleading – for example the recent debacle at Carillion was mentioned by one attendee, but I can think of numerous other examples.

The speakers covered the role of audits, both currently and how they might develop in the future (partly as a result of technology changes such as the use of data analytics). After Brexit it is likely there will be a broadly equivalent regime as investors are opposed to “unpicking”.

The FRC reviews about 150 audits every year and grades them into four categories (the reviews are listed on the FRC web site). By 2019 they want 90% to be in the top two ratings which they are not at present. It was noted that KPMG come out worse of the big audit firms. A common reason for audits falling short are lack of professional scepticism.

The FRC also undertakes thematic reviews of particular issues. I raised the issue of the lack of common standards for “adjusted” data commonly reported by companies (such as earnings, or return on capital that I mentioned in previous recent blog posts). The response was it was mandated to explain the definitions of such adjustments but I pointed out this did not help with comparability (e.g. of broker forecasts). The FRC said they will be consulting on this issue shortly, which is good news.

The role of the FRC in “enforcement” was covered. They stressed that their remit does not cover crime, they merely regulate accountants and actuaries although it is of course true that the failure of auditors to identify false accounts is one area they often investigate. It was mentioned that the size of the team on this had grown from 11 people in 2013 to 30 now and they are still looking for more bodies. This really just shows how under-resourced the FRC has been in the past. A total budget of £15m per year was mentioned. Comment: this seems hopelessly inadequate to me bearing in mind the number of public companies (and other organisations) and the number of auditors they have to monitor. It explains partly why complaints to the FRC often seem to disappear into a black hole, or why investigations often take so long as to be pointless. A list of cases under formal investigation is on the FRC web site (See here for that and two linked pages for the full list: https://www.frc.org.uk/auditors/enforcement-division/current-cases-accountancy-scheme which of course will tell you that Globo was commenced in December 2015 and Quindell in August 2015 and have yet to report).

I did suggest to the speaker that the FRC should be a party to the Code of Practice for Victims of Crime (as some audit failures involve the crime of fraud) as the Police, the SFO and FCA are, and which has improved their disclosure culture. This might assist those who report failings to get some feedback on the progress of a case. But the FRC argue that their role is not to investigate crime as such and they are inhibited by legislation/regulation on what they can disclose. However it is very clear to me that too often complaints get made to the FRC, but the complainants are not advised of progress and often have no idea on the outcome. This is an issue they will be looking at.

They hope the extra staffing will speed up investigations. The investigation process was discussed, but for example, Carillion had not even been placed under formal investigation as yet. It was suggested by audience members that the FRC was quite ineffective but recent cases such as AssetCo and Healthcare Locums were mentioned as demonstrating strong action and they have issued fines of £12 million in the last year which is the biggest ever. It was mentioned that fines go to the Treasury which is not ideal.

Confusion between the different regulatory bodies (e.g. the FRC, FCA, SFO, etc) was mentioned by attendees and the speakers, not helped by similar three letter acronyms. One attendee suggested that a unified regulatory body would help (such as the SEC in the USA). Comment: I agree at present it is unclear except to experts on who is responsible for what and the accountability of these bodies to the Government or to any democratic body of investors.

The FRC also has an interest in the UK Corporate Governance Code and the Stewardship Code. A consultation on a new Corporate Governance Code is imminent. There was also a session on the role of the Financial Reporting Lab where both ShareSoc and UKSA members have been involved in the past.

I’ll have to stop here because the budget speech by the Chancellor will commence soon and I wish to listen to it as there may be some major changes on investment tax reliefs. I’ll do another blog post later on it.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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Brexit, and the Finances of the Young

The national media continue to try to turn news into controversy. Their words are often incendiary and designed to provoke debate and therefore attention – as a means no doubt of promoting their publications. So their headlines become “verbal click-bait”.

As most people now read news on the internet, the publishers could be considered as acting as “trolls”. Here is the definition in Wikipedia of an internet troll: “In Internet slang, a troll is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting quarrels or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community with the intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal, on-topic discussion…….”

Written words are not the only example. Laura Kuenssberg of the BBC has adopted a similar verbal approach in her reporting. It’s not just Labour party members who should be complaining about her hysterical style.

There were a couple of news items this week that caught my attention in this area. There were several comments on the report issued by the FCA on family finances. The report indicated that half of UK adults were “financially vulnerable” and that those in their 20s and 30s were reliant on borrowing (personal loans and credit card debt). It reported that one fifth of 25-34 year olds have no savings at all with many struggling to pay bills. But this was interpreted by some of the media as the new “generational divide”.

But was it not always so? I certainly don’t recall having much in the way of savings at the age of 30 and lived from month to month, sometimes using credit card debt. In other words, I doubt that the situation has been changing over time; although the elderly have become better off lately due to rising state pensions I am not convinced the young have been getting poorer. But the media like to put a “spin” on any news item to grab attention.

As the report shows, the elderly do have more savings as one might expect but they are not evenly distributed. One amusing statement in the report is “A high proportion of retirees do not know how much savings they have”.

It’s a report well worth reading although rather long at almost 200 pages. Here is one useful titbit of information from it: “Around one in five (22%) 45‑54 year olds hold a stocks and shares ISA and the same proportion hold shares or equities directly”. It would have been good to obtain more detail information on that but it just shows there are a lot of shareholders out there.

Another example of media hysteria is the reporting on the Brexit negotiations. Will it be a hard or soft Brexit? Will the bill be £20 billion or £100 billion? Are Tories threatening to quit if there is any compromise, or revolt against the rule of Theresa May? Will Jeremy Corbyn scupper the whole affair by underming the Bill going through Parliament to support it? Who really knows, but it all makes for good headlines.

The Financial Times has become one of the leaders in scare mongering over Brexit with regular articles of a polemic nature by Martin Wolf and Simon Kuper on the topic. The latest example was by Martin Wolf in yesterdays FT. Now I have never thought much of Mr Wolf’s opinions on financial matters since he supported the nationalisation of Northern Rock, but his latest article (headlined “Zombie ideas about Brexit that refuse to die”) is pure hysteria. I don’t mind the occasional editorial opinion piece on Brexit, or some reporting on the potential technical difficulties if not slanted, but this piece was just propoganda in essence. It pointed out all the difficulties associated with a “hard” Brexit where no trade deal is agreed beforehand, but that is well known and most folks do not think that is likely. It certainly did not give a balanced view of the arguments for or against Brexit and what our negotiating stance should be. In reality there is likely to be a compromise of some kind – that is what politics usually ends up being about – compromise after compromise. Indeed it is one of the frustratations of anyone in the political world that achieving revolutions, rather than compromise, is not just difficult but exceedingly time consuming.

It is certainly regrettable that the Financial Times, since its takeover by Nikkei in 2015 has become much more politicised, and there is less factual reporting and more opinion. Perhaps it is just pandering to the views of most of its readers (the London-centric financial players and international businessmen) but if they expect to influence politicians or the wider community they will be disappointed.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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Response to Financing Growth Review

The Government is currently consulting on “Financing Growth in Innovative Firms” (otherwise known as the Patient Capital review). It covers the perceived problems in building world-beating companies from a small size in the UK, and the ways the Government provides support to early stage companies. That typically means the VCT, EIS and SEIS schemes with their associated tax reliefs and other possible “support” programmes where the Government funds them directly.

Anyone who invests in this area, directly or indirectly, should respond to the public consultation – the deadline is the 22nd September to do so. That is particularly so because reading between the lines it seems that some folks in the Government feel the tax reliefs are too generous and even suggest that investment would take place even without the tax reliefs. But my view is very different – I certainly would be very unlikely to invest in VCT and EIS funds without generous tax relief. They frequently generate dismal investment returns and have very high management fees plus administration costs. In reality, the historic record has been very patchy and the tax reliefs only help to offset the duds (which were difficult to identify in advance).

As someone who has experience of this sector both as an investor and a director of companies needing to raise capital, I have put in a personal submission on the topic. It is present here: Financing-Growth

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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Barclays Stockbroking Complaints

Several newspapers and on-line news services have reported this week on the debacle at Barclays. They launched a new “Smart Investor” site to replace their Barclayshare share trading service. The complaints range from failure to advise new account log-in details, support service uncontactable, old features missing (or perhaps simply moved elsewhere and not easily found in some cases), higher charges (fees restructured), to some account types or share holdings being no longer permitted.

Barclays have integrated it with their on-line bank account service which probably makes sense, but they clearly got some basic things wrong with this kind of migration which are:

  1. Beta testing of the new software on real customers must have been limited in scope, if done at all.
  2. All clients were moved at the same time and forcibly. No parallel running, no options for clients to choose when to migrate, etc.
  3. If possible, avoid “big bangs”. Changes to systems should be done gradually and in stages to avoid massive new learning processes by clients.

When will IT teams learn that folks get “habituated” to software and get very unhappy when it’s changed, even when the new system works well and has more features (and in Barclays case, it obviously had some problems). It’s like moving the products on the shelves of supermarkets so the customers can’t find their favourite foods any more. Now Paypal did a similar migration recently, and the new menus were hopeless to begin with, but they allowed you to drop into the old menus for some time. So only some minor cursing was the result. But Barclays may lose some of their 200,000 stockbroking clients from this debacle it seems.

Stockbroking platforms are really important to get right as they involve large value transactions by often sophisticated traders but there have been several examples over the years of new platforms failing to meet the basic needs of clients.

What do you do when this happens? Move your account to someone else? If only it was that simple.

From several experiences of doing this, all I can say is that you won’t have much difficulty finding someone to take it on, but the process often takes months with endless hassles along the way.

Indeed I have complained to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) about this in the past – see https://www.sharesoc.org/blog/regulations-and-law/stockbroker-transfers-more-evidence-of-unreasonable-delays/

Anyone who meets this problem should also complain to the FCA and encourage them to tackle it. If you can switch a bank account in 7 days (and that’s mandated), why not a stockbroking account?

The complexity partly arises from the use of nominee accounts and the problems with funds rather than direct shareholdings, but these difficulties are surely fixable if we had a decent share and fund registration system and stockbrokers were motivated to get the issue sorted out. Needless to point out that stockbrokers don’t like to make it easy to switch so won’t do so unless pushed because they like to lock their clients in (hence the use of nominee accounts also of course).

In the meantime, if you do decide to switch you may find it easier to move all your holdings into cash first – but you need to be wary about the tax implications of doing so.

This FCA web page tells you how to complain about Barclays new service, and about delays in transfers, here: https://www.fca.org.uk/consumers/how-complain . But if you wish to complain about the general lack of action on broker transfers, you could write to David Geale, Director of Policy, FCA, 25 The North Colonnade, London, E14 5HS.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson ) 

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Disclaimer: Read the About page before relying on any information in this post.