5 Jan 2016

Following a very wobbly third quarter, we saw a nervous rally in Q4. As usual, the FTSE 250 (+4.5%) did better than the All Share (+3.5%) and the FTSE 100 (+3.1%). As a reminder, over ten years the 250 has performed more than ten times as well as the 100, yet index trackers continue to offer the 100 or the All Share (than which the 250 returned 5x over 10 years) as the default choice. Quite by chance today I read this from Ross Clarke in the Spectator blog. Jeremy Corbyn wants to get rid of the British Empire Medal and David Cameron wants to ditch the Human Rights Act. But I have a different nomination for the national institution most desperately in need of abolition: the FTSE 100 index. It is harming our economy by consistently underplaying the returns to be made on stock market investments and encouraging us all to invest in property instead. Despite the first nudge higher in the Federal Reserve interest rate government bond markets were quiet. The 10 year Bund yield slipped fractionally from 0.61% to 0.58%. Ten year gilt yields nosed up from 1.8% to 1.9%. The weakness in commodity prices is making people nervous about global GDP growth and the next cycle of rising interest rates seems no closer than it did this time last year or this time the year before…. One of the features of Q4 was the relative scarcity of actual bad corporate news and the relative abundance of negative opinions. The latter seem to suit the spirit of the times. Stock market analysts invariably provide opinions for which there is a demand – don’t be hard on them, it’s the nature of what’s left of the job – and if investors wanted bullishness they would get it. At the moment, anyone putting the view that China is going to be ok, that global demand will eventually underpin commodity prices and allow investment in production again, that middle-Eastern politics are ultimately pragmatic and that the effects of terrorism are statistically trivial would be accused of being naive, stupid or wilfully misleading. This is interesting because one would normally expect Cassandras prophesizing doom to...

21 Sep 2015

Perhaps the most pertinent question for UK stock investors today is “can I trust those high dividend yields?” Glaxo has pre-announced that it will maintain its dividend at 80p per share this year and next year. That’s a yield of 6.2%. Royal Dutch appears to yield 7.5% on the basis of paying $1.88 (c.120p) also “guaranteed” for 2015 and 2016. If these companies can be relied on to continue these pay-outs, it matters little whether Janet Yellen dares to raise the federal funds rate from irrelevant to insignificant or indeed whether Mark Carney goes mad and does the same with the bank rate.  Here is what I previously wrote about the interpretation of high dividend yields. Shares that yield 5% The market does not like these companies. They are seen as unreliable. This may be because there are external threats that are beyond the power of management to prevent or mitigate or it may be that management is simply mistrusted. It might also be the case that they are mature businesses that are, rightly or wrongly, thought to be approaching the end of their life-cycle.   Shares that yield 6% The market does not trust the dividend. It expects it to be cut (or “rebased”, in modern corporate terminology). Naturally I agree with every word of this and everything that follows should be seen in the context of those comments. I will briefly discuss Glaxo and Royal Dutch before moving on to some humbler companies. There is a summary at the end. GLAXO           Price:  1296p                    Hoped for dividend:  80p                       Yield: 6.2% Glaxo is showing off by paying a bonus 20p in respect of Q4 (year-end March 2016). This seems to me an unnecessary answer to the sceptics who would anyway be confounded merely by flat progress. People dislike Big Pharma about as much as they dislike Big Tobacco and they both look like industries that spend a fortune on lobbying. Glaxo needs to generate $3.8bn of free cash flow to pay its 80p dividend without adding extra debt (nearer $5bn this year with the bonus). In 2014 it made free cash flow of $5.5bn; in the year to March 2015 free cash flow was...