Tag: Santa Rally

The Death of KIDs

HM Treasury have announced plans to revoke the PRIIPs regulations which will likely mean the death of KIDs (Key Information Documents).

KIDs are imposed and regulated under the PRIIPs regulation as devised by the EU for packaged investment products such as funds and trusts. KIDs give basic financial information, risk indicators and likely future performance based on past performance. Those who purchase investment trusts for example will be asked to confirm they have read the KID before purchasing a holding. But in reality KIDs are grossly misleading for many investment trusts.  This is because their estimate of future returns are based on short-term historic data. This has caused many fund managers of investment trusts to suggest that they should be ignored and investors should look at the other data that the companies publish to get a better view of likely future returns. This writer certainly ignores the KIDs for the investment trusts I hold and I doubt most retail investors took much notice of them.

KIDs were a typical example of complex financial regulations that were misconceived by EU bureaucrats while imposing substantial costs on investment trusts which they no doubt passed on to investors.

The Treasury have issued a public consultation on what might replace KIDs – see https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/priips-and-uk-retail-disclosure . It explains exactly why KIDs need scrapping.

I may respond in some detail to the consultation as I might have time over Xmas to do so.

In the meantime I am still waiting for the usual Santa rally in share prices. Perhaps I am just being impatient and Santa Claus may arrive in the last few days before Christmas. I hope so but the market has already gone quiet with prices stabilising. I guess folks might be too busy attending parties and doing Xmas shopping to spend time on share trading.

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

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Santa Rally and Maven VCT Merger

After a very strong upward run in my overall portfolio valuation over the last three weeks, it’s down by 1% today. Does that mean the traditional “santa rally” is over? I do get the impression that the rally happens earlier every year. Are folks wising up to the phenomenon or perhaps they are simply getting paid their Christmas bonuses earlier?

Certainly the racy technology stocks were particularly bouyant of late, leading me to sell a few shares in some of my holdings (“top slicing” to keep them not too large a proportion of my overall portfolio). But selling one’s winners is a very dangerous game to play.

Or perhaps the market has been depressed by other bad news such as the fact that your life expectancy has just been cut by up to 3 years by the Office of National Statistics (ONS). It seems their previous estimates that 34% of newborn boys would reach 100, and 40% of newborn girls would reach that age were wildly optimistic. Or was it some other bad news that caused markets to fall? Both the S&P500 and the FTSE-100 are both down 0.8% at the time of writing so my portfolio is just mirroring national trends it seems. Perhaps the US/China trade battle is hotting up? Sometimes stock markets are just volatile for no great reason other than investors following other investors.

I received notice of a proposed merger between Maven Income & Growth VCT 4 (MAV4) and Maven Income & Growth VCT 6 (MIG6) today. I hold the former but not the latter.

I am usually in favour of VCT mergers as combining them usually means the overhead costs can be reduced as a percentage of the asset value. Administration and management costs are often high in VCTs so combining portfolios can spread the fixed costs over a bigger portfolio and the costs of a merger can be recovered in a few years. The costs of this merger are high at approximately £408,000 but they expect to recover that in 32 months.

MIG6 was previously named Talisman VCT and so far as I recall had a pretty dismal track record. It was effectively bailed out by Maven when they took over management I believe. It’s difficult to see the performance of it since then because it is not a subscriber to the AIC service.

The document received says that “both companies have investments in predominantly the same unlisted private companies (with only 2 exceptions as at the date of this document)….”. But looking at the individual holdings in the two companies in their last annual reports gives me some doubts. They have different year end dates and there is clearly some overlap but they don’t appear to be identical.

I can see why the merger might be in the interests of Maven as the manager, and in the interests of investors in MIG6, but I see little benefit for MAV4 shareholders so I will probably vote against it. But if other investors have any views on this merger, please let me know.

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

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