investing etc. 0025

Tourist state of mind edition: Sardinia, St Neots, St Ives, writing advice, 4imprint, Bunzl, Focusrite, Howden Joinery, Macfarlane, Morgan Sindall, Nichols

Hello. This month has been full of contentment and stress, but let me write mostly about contentment. It is good for the soul.

The tourist state of mind

We scheduled a holiday in April because of a fortuitous conjunction: Easter, anniversaries and birthdays all fell in the same week. It also fell during a period of economic and political turmoil I was glad to escape.

It's easy to unhook in Sardinia in spring. It has skies and seas in every shade of blue, sheltered beaches, charismatic hills, ruins, and lightly cooked fish. In April, flowers bloom in improbable places and only the hardiest tourists have sprouted.

All you need is a battered underpowered Fiat Panda with six gears - two more than necessary - and the island is yours.

Walking a narrow path up a steep hill, we passed two ladies chatting furiously. Maybe they talked about the same things we did: weird rock formations and the scent of the nectar being collected by countless bees.

They overtook us. We overtook them. The dance continued until we reached a stone age site of enormous but vague cultural significance.

Hours later in a bar many kilometers away, we saw them again, still in intense conversation. We smiled, they waved. They said hello, we said goodbye.

One morning we arrived speculatively at a small port, hoping to catch a boat to an island that looks like a Bond villain’s lair.

We asked about the ferry at a small cabin in a car park. “We have one going in half an hour,” the lady inside told us. “There is no refreshment on the island but there is a shop by the Military Dock, so you can get food and drink there.”

At one end of the island of Tavolara, looking at the other end. The middle is a tombolo.

As we admired a painted staircase leading up to a gleaming white church, the people on the stairs arranged themselves in a colourful parade as though they were on a catwalk. We might have been in a West End musical. We were in the provincial town of Arzachena on a quiet day.

The owner of Olbia Cacao 1905, one of Sardinia’s five professional football teams, was filling in at the club shop when I popped in to buy a peaked cap.

Sadly, he did not have the code for the card terminal or till. Happily I had €15 in my pocket, and he pocketed that even though it wasn’t enough. He gave me some stickers too.

It always feels incredible to me when I visit a new place, that people live in these parallel universes going about their intricate lives. I know that’s ridiculous, but it is also wonderful.

You don’t have to go far to experience the tourist state of mind.

On Tuesday I drove my daughter and her friend to a wedding in St Neots. St Neots is about 40 minutes from Cambridge but Google routed us cross-country, which is a novelty. For us, almost any drive worth mentioning starts or finishes on the A14 or the M11.

About half way into the journey, I said: “We’re out of known territory now. I feel like a troll could emerge from behind a tree at any moment.” To my surprise, my daughter’s friend agreed. She’s from St Ives, which is just as remote as St Neots. There are probably trolls there too.

The tourist state of mind is superficial. We have left our troubles behind and are better people for it. We don’t know what’s troubling the people we meet, and we experience the politeness society reserves for smiling strangers.

But I think the tourist state of mind tells us something. It’s a helicopter view. Most of the people, most of the time, are going about life in a perfectly harmonious and sometimes even balletic way.

Two weeks later, remembering the tourist state of mind has been therapeutic. I returned to deal with investments creaking under the weight of uncertainty, an underperforming portfolio, a news agenda that had hardly moved on, a backlog of research, lots of articles to write, builders in the house and the danger I would forget the lesson of Sardinia!

Research

• Eleven shares make it through 5 Strikes. I ponder the big obvious objection to investing in Morgan Sindall, and conclude complexity may actually be a virtue..

• Six shares pass 5 Strikes. I take a closer look at Nichols. The soft drinks company leaves a slightly bitter taste, despite achieving no strikes at all.

• Liberation day and poor portfolio performance, make me pause for thought. Suspicion falls on the quality of the businesses in my Decision Engine.

• I split the Decision Engine to put the spotlight on the lowest quality shares.

Score

• Every year I summarise fitted kitchen manufacturer Howden Joinery’s distinctive business model. Every year it delivers. The next few years should reveal how well it is being implemented in France.

• Bunzl warned that profit would be lower than expected in 2025 the day I finalised my score. It shows how events can expose weaknesses in businesses, although Bunzl remains pretty strong.

• Hot on the heels of Bunzl, another distributor: Macfarlane. Macfarlanes profit margin is growing. Perhaps that is because it is also becoming a manufacturer.

Trade

• No trades in April: The share prices of 4Imprint and Focusrite have fallen far further than I ever thought they would. I am still a believer, but not confident enough to add to Share Sleuth’s holdings.

etc

• Oliver Burkeman recommends “How to Write a Lot” by Paul Silva. His message is that writers need a schedule, which is hardly groundbreaking advice.

• Burkeman says people want a shiny new productivity hack that doesn’t commit them to the hard grind, but there isn’t one. Insisting this, is the great kindness of the book.

• I don’t have a schedule. I commit to 4 hours of research and writing every weekday. It doesn’t matter when I do it, but I must. It worked well for me until I entered crisis mode a fortnight ago. Now I am working my way back to it!

Thanks for reading

My gratuitous picture this month captures a moment frozen in time, the moment I fell asleep...

investing etc. 0026 should be with you on Saturday 7 June.