Lindsell Train Investment Share Discussion Threads

[flyer61] 07/6/2024 20:23

FABIUS1....seems very illogical....price is £800-£810 for weeks then a trade goes through at £848 (near half a million quid) and that's a sell. In my books it was clearly a BUY.

[fabius1] 07/6/2024 20:16

Spec - Well, a relatively large trade printed on 5 June which looks like it might have been a sell. If I was going to sell/go short this would probably be the area at the top of the downtrend. I still think a test of £700-£600 is on the cards.

[flyer61] 07/6/2024 18:48

have you checked Allsops.....few extra added today...

Be a turn up for the books if I was proved right here

Took some off the table at £850 today.

[spectoacc] 07/6/2024 18:34

Been an odd rise for sure - can't explain it.

[flyer61] 07/6/2024 18:14

We wait with interest to hear from our board Spec.

My thesis here that a 20% discount was to great seems to be playing out. (Fingers crossed!)

[spectoacc] 07/6/2024 17:57

Wrong thread I know, but CityWire re FGT:

" Nick Train remains under pressure from the board to improve the trust’s underlying performance with the £1.5bn fund ranked at the bottom of the UK Equity Income sector with a total shareholder return including dividends of just 7.2% over five years."

So +7.2% over 5 years inc divis (reinvested divis?), vs -3.5% over 5 years in capital terms.

NAV is just about exactly the same.

[steve3sandal] 07/6/2024 12:25

Flyer, I could only guess that there have been more buyers than sellers. I don’t pay for Level2 so no visibility on the book but that large off market trade you flagged the other day might have caught the MMs short so now sellers offered a more tempting price to bail out? Nothing significant reported by quoted holdings, broker downgrade on DGE to contend with. Maybe it’s become known £51.50 will be announced. Mystery.

[raj k] 07/6/2024 12:14

This is why i dont like platforms being able to get a special discounted class of a fund like HL did with Woody Woodford. I note that HL didnt cut their own platform fee as the AUM of Woodies funds increased. Nah they wanted their cut and get fatter on it too. Dampier and Woody are shameless .

[flyer61] 07/6/2024 12:09

s3s...not sure it is LTL directors deciding the 1.85% but it is not our own? I'm guessing getting ready to put a decent wallop of our shares into the trough sorry treasury at LTL. Is it a reflection of them having to cut the fees they charge on mandates at LTL?

Any thoughts on the marginally better share price performance?

[steve3sandal] 07/6/2024 11:57

As I’m sure we can all see above AUM now £14.1Bn (£14.3Bn) at end May. LTL* directors valuation now reduced to 1.85% AUM (1.90%) based on pro forma NP of £26M. I’m sure they wouldn’t sell it at this valuation. Impact on our LTI is to drive NAV down to £987. On that basis the discount tightening which we might hope for is happening but for all the wrong reasons. Sighs.

*Edit LTI directors, little typo, thx Flyer.

[flyer61] 07/6/2024 11:45

however share price is indicating we might be heading back towards a slightly lower discount to NAV.

[flyer61] 07/6/2024 11:44

Noting the figure for calculating notional profits has been reduced from 1.9% of AUM to 1.85%. Another £200M drop in AUM.

[essentialinvestor] 07/6/2024 10:50

Spec, it's a brill insight.

You are almost living it while reading, great journalism.

[spectoacc] 07/6/2024 06:33

Great article @EI, that one had passed me by.

I'd forgotten the deal where HL got a discount (which brought in thousands of new a/c's) in return for Dampier & co's endless promotion of WIM:

"Mr Woodford’s sales team and Hargreaves struck a deal where the fund manager would offer a discount on its products to the fund supermarket, in return for heavy promotion. Hargreaves added Woodford’s funds to its “best buy” lists of recommended products."

[flyer61] 06/6/2024 21:01

The trick is not to read the money sections of the weekend papers….you avoid all these so called stars……

[fabius1] 06/6/2024 20:04

Yes to divi traps and far too many. Tail wagging the dog.

[essentialinvestor] 06/6/2024 20:01

Neil Woodford: the inside story of his rise and rapid fall

18 Oct 2019 — "Tale of hubris and misplaced loyalty exposes flaws of an industry in thrall to star performers.."

[spectoacc] 06/6/2024 19:09

What a ride that was. Very few from that era still around - eg BATM. Filtronic having a little resurgence.

US heading that way again, headlined by comedy $3trn NVID.

Even Woody's "solid fundamentals" picks were mostly bad - went back to tobaccos, had LLOY, Kier (averaged all the way down), and more. Wasn't just the junk that killed him, albeit he ended up concentrated on it once redemptions built up.

And what junk that mostly was, eg microchipped pallets, ALM, Northwest Bio fraud.

Provident Financial & the housebuilders too. Big divi payers, many of them traps.

[fabius1] 06/6/2024 17:37

Woodford's demise is all the more ironic when you consider that his greatest claim to fame was to stick to solid fundamentals in the dotcom boom when everyone was throwing money at the likes of Baltimore Technologies, the then darling of the FTSE 100. Baltimore what I hear you say. Exactly. It vanished in 2005, never to be seen again.

[spectoacc] 06/6/2024 13:47

Woody's hubris was, and still is, grotesque. Fully deserving of the opprobrium. Was clear in 2016 he'd lost the plot. Two great calls, tech boom and banking crisis, but WIM was a shambles.

Train hasn't lost the plot, so much as not really budged from the bond proxy strategy that did so fantastically during ZIRP.

Much prefer the wealth preservers, CGT/RICA/PNL, but notable they've badly underperformed recently too. I'd still take Ruffer, Peter Spiller, and Lyon over Train, any day.

[lloydypool] 06/6/2024 13:26

Agree, no need to shed any tears & ultimately it was he who chose to change his path from one that had worked for him (& attracted a following). If he had been more transparent what he was doing many PI's wouldn't have followed him so he has certainly contributed to his own downfall. I guess my limited defence of him is that I still think he has view points that are worth listening to and the mistakes he made doesn't change that.

[essentialinvestor] 06/6/2024 12:05

Lloyd, arguably lack of a strutured risk control backdrop - at EDIN, he was responsible to a BOD and shareholders.

I certainly would not shed any tears for the man, he's made his money and took fat dividends, up until near the end as well.


There's a brilliant FT Long Read article on his downfall.

[giltedge1] 06/6/2024 12:02

Just to give an update on LTI rising stars, you know the ones who we are paying handsomely to stop leaving. Ben, Alec & Madeline. If you remember they set up US Fund during Covid so these stars can run & show worth. I put funds in November 22 up 9% Capital excluding divs, on same date put same amount in UBS S&P500 tracker, up 28%, a bit of a lag 19% in 18 months!. Also reviewed Japanese fund run by ML, last 5 years -20%,I think last but 1 in City Wire out of 123 odd. Topix index in that time wait for it, up 60%, so an 80% underperformance. I think they should put out a health warning, do not invest!. I have always said ML a passenger, reminds me of F1 team that always starts last by a mile but is included to make up numbers, but ends up getting in the way of other drivers.

[lloydypool] 06/6/2024 11:37

I don't actually think Woodford is anywhere near as flawed as people make out. He's a knowledgeable guy and a decent economic trend spotter/stock picker but for some crazy reason when he set up his own fund house he went entirely off piste in a manner that asked for issues in an open ended fund.

People make mistakes and I'd like to think he didn't do it entirely for the wrong reasons, he has certainly paid a high price with his reputation damaged beyond repair.

Train is probably not that different in his style but hopefully a) this being a closed ended fund helps and b) the low liquidity/potentially worthless micro caps don't figure here. I would prefer a lower exposure to LT Ltd here, but that probably accounts for a big part of the discount to NAV. For me, if you want exposure to the mega cap US stocks than you may as well buy them direct or an ETF so something like LTI seems a good diversifier to buy fairly solid but low growth companies paying a reasonable divi. Doubt it will make anyone rich but hopefully keeps you rich or at least diversifies your portfolio.

[fabius1] 06/6/2024 11:34

On Woodford et al which includes a distinguished list from Anthony Bolton to Bill Cross, it is interesting to note fund manager performance and the perceived reasons, be it stock picking or macro strategy. Seems to me that reversion to the mean plays a key part and the 'wealth preservation' funds such as CGT/PNL/RICA/RCP? understand this and concentrate on the defence game with notable success over time.