Hong Kong Phoney

What future does the Hong Kong stock market have under China’s growing influence?

Schroder AsiaPacific

SDP’s pragmatic approach has driven another year of outperformance…

Schroder AsiaPacific

SDP has delivered strong long-term outperformance driven by stock selection…

Economic and Political Monthly Roundup January 2023

A collation of recent insights on markets and economies taken from the comments made by chairs and investment managers of investment companies – have a read and make your own minds up. Please remember that nothing in this note is designed to encourage you to buy or sell any of the companies mentioned.

Economic and Political Monthly Roundup January 2023

A collation of recent insights on markets and economies taken from the comments made by chairs and investment managers of investment companies – have a read and make your own minds up. Please remember that nothing in this note is designed to encourage you to buy or sell any of the companies mentioned.

Schroder AsiaPacific

SDP invests in quality companies to take advantage of the long-term secular growth opportunities in Asia…

Schroder AsiaPacific Fund - Successfully selecting winners across Asia

Schroder AsiaPacific Fund (SDP) invests in companies located and trading primarily in China, South Korea, Taiwan, India and South-East Asia. SDP recently celebrated its 25-year anniversary and was managed by Mathew Dobbs from inception until his retirement in March 2021. However, its new manager, Richard Sennitt, worked closely with Dobbs for 13 years and will maintain the same investment strategy and process: a bottom-up, stock-picking investment approach, which aims to achieve growth in excess

Schroder AsiaPacific - Overview

Schroder Asia Pacific (SDP) offers access to a portfolio of high quality Asian companies selected for their long-term growth potential. The manager, Matthew Dobbs, tells us he is focused on finding the highest quality companies, in terms of both financials and corporate governance. He has constructed a portfolio of the most attractive stocks, bought when he thinks they are being undervalued by the market, with a long-term view and little attention paid to short-term market movements. As we discu

Dangerous ground:the perils of timing the market

Anyone who takes a strong interest in financial markets sometimes feels the pull of market timing. It is seductive to imagine yourself a canny trader, buying or selling positions just before the market shifts, trading investments daily and beating the herd with superior analysis and instincts. We can add to the existing research suggesting this is a bad idea, and that taking a long-term view of your investments is the way to go. We looked at investment trusts that have outperformed over the past

Best in class

Today, we introduce our investment trust ratings. According to the quantitative screens we have selected in an attempt to highlight the best performers in the closed-ended universe, the trusts discussed here have been the best in their classes over the last five years. We have selected trusts using two different sets of criteria, aiming to identify the top performers for capital growth and for achieving a high and growing income. There are many rating systems for open-ended funds, but no quantit

Schroder AsiaPacific Fund - Overview

Schroder AsiaPacific aims to generate long-term capital growth from a portfolio of emerging Asian equities. The trust has performed well in recent years, with top quintile returns over three and five-year periods; this has been helped by exposure to the technology and consumer discretionary sectors, which the manager, Matthew Dobbs, believes are benefitting from and shaping secular growth trends. Matthew has run the trust since it was launched in 1995, making him one of the most experienced fund

Information overload

Emerging markets remain a highly attractive place to invest for the longer term, despite the difficult period for the region this year. We do not believe that the current travails amount to a broad-based crisis in the region. In fact, many of the recent headlines surrounding emerging markets are irrelevant to long-term investor as they are focused on small and insignificant markets. We believe the index has done poorly mainly thanks to specific issues with individual countries and regions rather

Schroder AsiaPacific Fund - Overview

Schroder AsiaPacific Fund has an excellent track record and is led by a highly-experienced manager in the form of veteran fund manager Matthew Dobbs, who has more than thirty five years’ experience in Asian equities. Matthew tries to ensure that he doesn’t pay “over the odds” for his stocks, and this focus on valuation gives the trust a more conservative feel when compared to its more extreme growth peers. In Matthew’s view, Asian investors tend to focus on higher growth stocks, which means lowe

What now for Asia?

It is incredibly difficult to recognise entry points for markets or stocks: there is always a good reason for something to seem cheap but at the same time, a plausible cause for it to get cheaper. With threats of a trade war echoing in our ears and investors smarting from an unexpectedly tough first quarter, media attention has focused on the potential ‘buying opportunity’ in Asian equities, and against that backdrop we consider the outlook. As we show in the graph below, global stocks with the

Clip Money is a rapidly growing NCR-backed start-up based in Ottawa, Canada, and operating in Canada and the US.

Clip Money is a rapidly growing NCR-backed start-up based in Ottawa, Canada, and operating in Canada and the US. It is helping physical stores and businesses quickly, safely, and less expensively deposit cash into their bank accounts, as well as replenishing notes and coins for store operations. The company uses its proprietary software platform to facilitate cash management, and its network is made up of a network of DropBoxes and NCR ATMs located in retail outlets. Clip also partners with Bri

Hardman & Co Monthly: October 2024

Feature article: Labour’s first Budget - Investors in their sights? Summary ► Budgets are always important for investors. ► The imminent Budget, at the end of October, will be doubly so, because it is the first from the new Labour government, and it has already signalled the need to fill an alleged £22bn black hole, while ruling out changes to more than half the tax base. That implies a lot of the pain will be felt by investors. ► This paper considers the impact of increases in rates for th

Morning Note – 30 September 2024

Impressive progress in H1'24, forecasts maintained

Global Smaller Companies

GSCT offers comprehensive exposure to small-caps worldwide…

Gresham House Energy Storage Fund - Rising revenues and big plans for the future

Gresham House Energy Storage Fund (GRID) invests in utility-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS) in Great Britain. The sector had a tough start to the year, due to a deterioration in revenue conditions, but GRID’s efforts to stabilise revenues and increase capacity are paying off. The manager, Ben Guest, is looking forward to a significant improvement in revenue in 2025, underpinned by a large, contracted earnings base, and plans for new pipeline projects, further augmentations to GRID’s

Balancing act

Over the past three years, trusts with blended approaches rather than a strong tilt to growth or value have been at or near the top of the pack across the developed equities sectors, benefitting from their flexibility in a period of extreme style gyrations.

HICL Infrastructure

HICL’s increased dividend target comes amidst other positive signs…

Henderson Far East Income - Asian income fund with 5.9% dividend yield

Henderson Far East Income (HFEL) is a pan-Asian investment company with a focus on achieving a high and growing income as well as capital growth. While the emphasis on income will naturally lead the management team to focus on some older-economy sectors where there is a long history of rewarding investors with dividends, lead manager Mike Kerley reports that an increasing number of high-growth technology stocks in Asia are now generating healthy cash payouts. However, the manager retains a tilt

Templeton Emerging Markets Investment Trust - Under-owned, undervalued & under-appreciated

Templeton Emerging Markets Investment Trust’s (TEMIT’s) co-managers Chetan Sehgal (lead manager) and Andrew Ness consider that the case for emerging markets is not well understood. Hence, they believe that the regions remain under-owned, undervalued and under-appreciated, which provides an interesting opportunity for global investors. There are several powerful trends supporting the superior economic growth prospects of emerging markets versus those in developed regions, including demographics,

Trading in-line and delivering strategic progress

Today’s AGM update confirms that Vp continues to perform well, reiterating full year expectations despite challenges in certain markets (notably construction). Meanwhile, the new management team is progressing the refreshed strategic priorities set out in June. Broad market trends are consistent with those reported in recent periods. Infrastructure remains supportive, with good momentum and strong demand in transmission, water and civil engineering, although rail has seen a slower start to the

Zeus Industrials Round-Up - 13 September 2024

The UK industrial sector continues to show promising signs of recovery, with manufacturing PMI reaching a 26-month high of 52.5 in August as all survey indicators but one expanded. Economic data has also been encouraging, with UK pay growth cooling to a two-year low and inflation rising only slightly in July – supporting the case for further interest rate cuts this year by the BoE.

Allenby Capital TMT Update - 09.09.24 - ENSI.L, CPX.L, TERN.L, CHSS.L, ELEG.L, CNC.L

Please find below our weekly update covering themes that we feel that are of interest to investors and participants in the small and mid-cap TMT sector as well as commentary on recent newsflow.

PCI Pal - FY24 revenue growth of +20%, strong partner momentum

PCI Pal’s FY24 trading update shows FY24E revenue growth of +20% to £18.0m, strong traction with major partners, and FY24E net cash in line with our previous £4.3m. FY24E revenue of £18.0m includes a £0.7m impact from a specific project where the customer has paid in full and the company has delivered the services, but following discussions with the auditors the Board has decided to defer the revenue from FY24 into FY25. The remaining £0.4m revenue change vs our previous FY24E forecast reflects

Morning Note – 29 August 2024