Throwing the net wide open

It’s performance, Jim, but not as we know it

I’ve updated the Thrifty 30 performance table and as usual have nothing to say about the portfolio’s performance in terms of share price movements. But I’m still thinking hard about my my own performance.

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Towards the perfect PE

Exposing Johnson’s beating heart

If you scrape away the nasties, the pension fund, the debt and the operating leases, there’s a perfectly viable business at the heart of Johnson Service on sale at a reasonable price. I reckon it earns a 12% return on capital, also promising investors an earnings yield of about 12%, perhaps more, at the current share price.

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Momentum: the value investor’s best friend

Quantitave Value Investing in Europe: What Works for Achieving Alpha

There is a growing literature on statistical methods to beat the market inspired by the original classics, Dremen‘s Contrarian Investment Strategies and Greenblatt‘s Little Book, but a new report uniquely focuses on Europe and adds momentum to the mix of factors tested. Like other studies, it shows simple value measures beat the market, but with a surprising twist.

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Kamikaze trade might pay off

Investing in the unlisted

I’m going to stray off the subject of the Thrifty 30 portfolio today, and describe a trade I couldn’t make in the model portfolio because it doesn’t include unlisted shares. In some ways it felt like a kamikaze trade using a small portion of my own pension fund. But I’m relieved to discover, it probably wasn’t!

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Bonus culture is root of our economic problems

Profit at the expense of investment is destroying our economy

These are bold statements, and the economy is a hazy concept that is largely inconceivable to me, so they may be wrong.

But, thanks to Andrew Smithers, a prescient economist I once interviewed on internet TV, I think I’ve experienced a moment of lucidity that has made one small section of the economic puzzle more comprehensible.

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