30 Mar 2018

Ten years ago, I was paid to write research on investing in software companies. My USP was that I was pretty much a technophobe with little or no interest in software but with something of a passion for finding how to make money by investing in companies. Back in the early 2000s the world of software was full of exclusive jargon which, deliberately or not, served to discourage scepticism. The following is selected more or less at random from the 2006 Annual Report of SAP AG. THE “NEXT BIG THING” IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Today, the IT sector stands on the verge of widespread adoption of service-oriented architecture (SOA), a development that promises to change the dynamics of the software industry as much as the shift to client-server architecture did 15 years ago. In essence, SOA defines the technical standards that enable the various enterprise software applications used by companies and their business partners to exchange data effectively. Thus, SOA will help reduce the costs of creating and maintaining data exchange interfaces, a factor CIOs consistently cite as one of their top challenges. When I read stuff like this I used to think a) does this mean anything and b) even if it does, how is anyone going to persuade the board of a major company to throw money at it? That is why I hit upon a personal rule that can be usefully extended from the narrow world of software analysis to life itself – never be afraid to ask the stupid question. Experience teaches that it’s often the hardest one to answer. Fifteen years ago the normal software business model was to sell a perpetual licence that allowed the customer to use the software plus an annually payable fee that got him maintenance and upgrades. The analyst community was obsessed with the growth of software companies and consequently watched the “new licence sales” number in every quarterly earnings release. Share prices were highly volatile as a result. A “miss” from the quarterly numbers often resulted in carnage for the shares. I was actually frightened. How I could I make recommendations to buy and sell shares when my view could and probably would be...

6 Feb 2014

“The bond markets are suggesting that we are looking at a fairly gentle, low inflation recovery.” The dangerously alluring feeling of comfort that I wrote about in my Q4 report did not last long. Major stock markets have fallen this year: FTSE -4%, Dow Jones -6%, Nikkei -13%. Many financial commentators are saying that this is the result of weakness in emerging markets which are in danger of being starved of investment dollars as the Federal Reserve continues its tapering policy. Even writing that makes me feel slightly ridiculous. It is typical of the confusing non-explanations offered by the financial services industry, helping only to encourage ordinary punters in the belief that all this is far too hard for them to understand. “Emerging markets” is an inherently biased way of referring to exotic countries in need of investment.  The term seems to have been invented in the 1980s. According to Wikipedia, prior to that the label Less Developed Countries (LDCs) was used. In 2012, the IMF identified 25 emerging markets. For the record: Argentina;  Brazil; Bulgaria; Chile; China; Colombia; Estonia; Hungary; India; Indonesia; Latvia; Lithuania; Malaysia; Mexico; Pakistan; Peru; Philippines; Poland; Romania; Russia; South Africa; Thailand; Turkey; Ukraine; Venezuela Note, sadly, that that the only African country is RSA. Looking again at the list, if you are particularly attached to democracy, private ownership rights or tolerance of homosexuality, you might find the thought of investing in some of these countries hard to digest. You might also ask how many countries have succeeded in emerging since the 1980s. The answer to that would appear to be zero. Foreign investment in emerging markets tends to be tidal: it flows in and it flows out again (if it can). Why then should this concern the risk-averse investor? There are two reasons, one specific and one general. The specific reason is that businesses in which we might be invested could be hit by diving emerging market economies. Global companies that sell consumer products are especially prone to this. Last week, Diageo the drinks company reported weakness in China and Nigeria. The general reason is that nervousness is infectious (especially in the banking industry). Undoubtedly, we have both these...