Monthly Archives: July 2018

PYPL, PHA bought

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The heatwave has been quite something. I’ve been trying to make the most of it, but unfortunately the timing has coincided with a very busy period for me at work. I’ve also become acutely conscious of just how unprepared London’s infrastructure is for heatwaves. Commuting has been particularly unbearable. It’s been more difficult to take advantage of this time to work on the blog. Hopefully the hot weather hasn’t been clouding my judgment, as I think I’d been becoming overly bullish about near term market prospects. That is until Thursday’s and Friday’s falls in US tech stocks brought me back down to earth.

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‘We are all contrarians’

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This week I came across an article referencing the recent Shareholder Letter of Longleaf, a value investing fund. This letter contains a familiar treatise on value investing vs growth investing and I wouldn’t say was particularly notable. However, I was struck by a couple of things in this letter. There is a strong emphasis on how value investing is contrarian and unpopular. There is nothing unusual about this view, but unlike other times I have seen it expressed, quality investing was characterised as the ‘popular view’, against which value investing was contrasted. As a self-described quality investor and contrarian, this made me sit up a bit and question: ‘who’s the real contrarian here?’ Continue reading →

Buying spree

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It feels somewhat uncomfortable writing a post entitled ‘buying spree’, given my current ambition to trade less. However, it seemed appropriate given I bought three new positions this week. Quite a few decent looking opportunities have been cropping up and it seemed foolish not to capitalise on at least some of them. Continue reading →

Thoughts on market crashes

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Nine years into a bull market following the financial crisis, I think many investors are wondering whether the next market crash is imminent. I for one have been fairly preoccupied about this since the end of last year and have been planning to write a post sharing my musings on market timing for quite some time. Can the timing of the next market crash be predicted with any precision at all? Is there anything that can be done to prepare for it, or is it just not worth worrying about?
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