ietc. 0008

Shares v bonds, thumbs up for Bloomsbury Publishing and Hollywood Bowl, Quartix derated, 142 companies worthy of investigation, and the Alhambra. Hurrah!

On one of the brighter days earlier this month, I was sitting on a park bench reading a copy of the Financial Times when an old man pulled up in his car. 

When he saw the pink paper, he ambled up to me, and said:

“Is there any good news in there?”

“I’m sure there is, somewhere...”, I replied, theatrically shuffling through the pages.

“I do a bit of stocks and shares myself,” he said, smiling beatifically

“In Hargreaves Lansdown.”

(He must have meant using the investment platform, as Hargreaves Lansdown shares haven’t been doing very well!)

“Made quite a bit of money by reinvesting the dividends...”

“Thirty years ago I started,” he said

“The family is pretty happy.”

“Thirty years,” I replied, ”Your shares can grow a lot in thirty years.”

Shares ‘til we die

He reminded me of another gentleman, who I interviewed almost twenty years ago.

I hope Dr Martin is still alive today. If he is, he will be a very old man and, I suspect, quite a contented one. 

Investing in shares “gelled” for him when he retired from his career as a metallurgist at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment.

He had settled on a strategy of investing in companies that had increased their dividends year after year.

By the time I met Dr Martin, he was in his late seventies, and I put it to him that conventionally an adviser might recommend bonds to a pensioner, yet he had none.

 "Don't you think that is because they are talking about people who really do not wish to do anything?" He replied. 

"They just want a safe haven for their money so they go into bonds. It is perfectly reasonable to do. But I have devoted thirty years to trying to find a system that works. I am not going to abandon that just because I should be in bonds."

My meeting in the park was the first of two occasions this month that Dr Martin’s words came into my mind. 

The second time was on the tennis court, when between points my opponent asked me how much of the money he had come into he should invest in bonds. 

That conversation inspired the, perhaps premature, proclamation that I am in shares ‘til I die.

Trawling the entire market

Also on Interactive Investor, I explained why I trimmed the Share Sleuth portfolio’s holding in Bloomsbury Publishing, one of its outstanding recent performers. 

Hollywood Bowl got the thumbs up, but its share price didn’t, and Quartix, the vehicle tracking company, was derated after a ‘fever dream’ of a year.

Meanwhile, I have just completed my first pass of the entire stock market using SharePad data. It identified a grand total of 142 companies worthy of further investigation.

Thanks for reading

Thanks for reading. On top of all of that, we have also enjoyed a short break in Granada and La Alpujarra, wonderful places where we experienced a short-lived heatwave.

Gratuitous picture looking out from the Alhambra at the people looking back at us from the Mirador de San Nicolás.

If you are enjoying investing etc. you might also enjoy investing stuff, Phil Oakley’s new substack. 

Phil probably doesn’t need much of an introduction as we tread a similar beat, but he teases a lot from the numbers and his articles are always educational. 

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