New Portfolio Snapshot & Allocation

Tags

agri-business, alternative assets, asset allocation, bubbles, cash, diversification, emerging markets, Europe, Event Driven, frontier markets, Ireland, luxury goods, macro investment thesis, mobile, natural resources, Nifty Fifty, portfolio allocation, property, smartphone revolution, UK, US, volatility

Welcome to the dog days of summer…

A good time to pause & take stock of my portfolio. Following on from my recent H1-2017 portfolio performance post, here’s my Top 10 Holdings today:

In fact, the table lists all of my current disclosed holdings. And just to add some overall context, only five of these holdings actually feature in my Total Portfolio Top 10, while Newmark Security doesn’t even make the Top 20 any longer.

I won’t add new commentary here, since I last focused on my big H1-2017 winners & losers, and covered all my disclosed holdings in this January Top Trumps post. Not to mention, the rash of new investment write-ups this year: Alphabet (GOOGL:US), Record (REC:LN) & Applegreen (APGN:ID). But for your reference, I will provide corporate website & Bloomberg links, links to relevant historic posts & write-ups (remember, good investment theses tend to evolve slowly!), plus the latest share price & market cap for each stock:

i) Alphabet (GOOGL:US, or GOOG:US)   (9.5% Portfolio Holding):

‘So Why Not Google It..?’

Share Price:   USD 940.08

Market Cap:   USD 648 Billion

Advertisement

Current Portfolio Snapshot & Allocation

Tags

agri-business, averaging, cash, correlation, distressed, diversification, emerging markets, Event Driven, frontier markets, Ireland, luxury goods, mobile, portfolio allocation, property, UK, US, volatility

OK, the Olympics are over – time to focus, focus!

And these pleasant late summer markets might soon grow stormy…

So it’s as good a time as any to offer up a current snapshot of my top holdings & portfolio allocation. Let’s begin with my Top Nine holdings, which follows on from my recent H1-2016 Performance post. [In this post/tables, since I made no incremental H1 buys/sells, the average stake for each holding actually equated to my year-end 2015 holdings…so eight months later, an update’s clearly overdue!]:

[Current:  As of CoB 24-Aug-2016]

For your reference, in my last post, I included a paragraph (or two) of updated commentary for each individual holding. I also completed a similar exercise in my Top Tips post back in January. And just for completeness here, I’ll again provide corporate website & Bloomberg links, links to relevant posts/write-ups (remember, good investment theses tend to evolve slowly), plus the closing share price & market cap for each stock:

i) Zamano (ZMNO:ID, or ZMNO:LN) (9.3% Portfolio Holding):

‘Zamano…So, What Now?!’      (NB: First link = most recent post/write-up)

‘Zoom, Zoom…Zamano!’

Share Price:   EUR 0.113

Market Cap:   EUR 11.2 Million

Crushin’ It: FY-2015 Portfolio Performance

Tags

benchmarking, Bloomberg Euro 500, emerging markets, frontier markets, FTSE 100, FTSE AIM All-Share, hedge funds, ISEQ, portfolio allocation, portfolio performance, S&P 500, value investing

OK, Top Tips done – now, it’s performance time!

And already I’m fully aware the designated performance benchmark here is very different for me than everybody else…which is, of course, entirely my own fault! Because I chose to include the ISEQ as 25% of my benchmark, and it’s performed quite spectacularly every single year. Which, you’ll have to admit, is terribly unfair… 😉

Unfair, because it jacks up my benchmark return every year. And because it’s such a painful & galling reminder that if I’d been just a little bit dumber, and simply overdosed on the Irish market, doubtless I’d now be reporting a totally amazing performance. Except…who bets their entire portfolio on a single market? Esp. the Irish market, which is a mere rounding error globally (in terms of market cap)? Intellectually, prudent diversification makes all the sense in the world, but emotionally it’s a lose-lose proposition: ‘Cos markets surge & you loathe being diversified, you just want to concentrated on the winners…then markets collapse, and being diversified is great, except you’re still inescapably miserable because you’re actually losing money! But at this point, the ISEQ’s clearly my personal cross to bear – so let’s just stick with it – here’s my 2015 benchmark:

Obviously, it’s been a game of two halves – with most markets suffering in the second half – so I’ve also added a H1 vs. H2 breakout. But wouldya ever take a gander at that ISEQ performance! Who’d have expected an additional +12.0% rally, after an +18.0% surge in H1? And that’s nothing…if I described a market which had clocked 15%+ annual returns in 2012-2014, would you ever have guessed a +30.0% return for 2015?! Methinks not… But then again, I’ve actually been consistently bullish on the Irish market for the past 4 years now – which I’m v pleased by, except when I agonise over the fact I capitalised far too little on such prescience. Sad, sad, sad…

$DCEL: Denis’s Cash Extraction Lifeline

Tags

$DCEL, Denis O'Brien, Digicel, Digicel Group, frontier markets, Haiti, Irish shares, mobile phones, MTN Group, Papua New Guinea, related-party deals

NB: I should immediately note Denis O’Brien is not selling any of his shares in the upcoming Digicel IPO. And why should he…when the company’s already after paying him $1.1 billion in dividends over the last 3 years. Surely that will keep the home fires burning for quite some time to come!?

NB: And ‘Lifeline’ is simply a reference to ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’ (or Billionaire?!) – nothing at all to do with lifeboats, or sinking, or drowning, or debt, or anything else even remotely like that…

So, ever since Denis O’Brien started popping up at regular intervals on CNBC & Bloomberg, maybe eighteen months ago now, I just knew in my gut he had a whopping great IPO in the works… Fast-forward, and Digicel’s now billed as the largest ‘Irish’ IPO ever, a revised F-1/A was just filed with an indicative $13-$16 per share price range, and its NYSE IPO is just about ready to drop. With everybody & their mother talking about it (well, except for Johnny Ronan’s fat mouth), how can I resist chipping in my two cents..?!

Let’s kick off with an introduction: Digicel Group is a leading provider of mobile communication services in the Caribbean & South Pacific regions. Its mobile subscriber base has grown from just 0.4 million in 2002 to a total of 13.6 million subscribers as of Jun-2015 (an impressive 31.7% CAGR). It now enjoys a number one position in 21 of the 31 markets in which it operates.

The Inherent Contradictions of My Portfolio (or Who’s The Greater Fool..?) (Part IV)

Tags

asset allocation, bubbles, bullish, developed markets, don't fight the Fed, emerging markets, frontier markets, macro investment thesis, Nifty Fifty, wall of money

Continued from Part III.

OK, so here’s an end-June snapshot of my current portfolio allocation:

[NB: And here’s my portfolio a year ago (from this post) – the majority of subsequent changes are obviously due to sales/purchases & the share price appreciation/depreciation of (mostly disclosed) holdings. Notably, my minor Hedge & Nat Resources allocations are now eliminated on sales of holdings, while my new US & Undisclosed (a new asset class I’m still working on) allocations reflect undisclosed new holdings. I’ll also highlight my Cash allocation’s pretty minimal, with the priority on Fixed Income (which is how I basically consider my Alternative Asset Opportunities (TLI:LN) holding) & Event-Driven (essentially, my NTR plc holding…noting, in particular, last week’s announcement of a return of capital/wind-down) 🙂 ]

Some big & small changes, obviously – but in the scheme of things, it certainly isn’t a radically different portfolio. But what were you expecting…did you really think I’d turn on a dime & completely transform my portfolio? Um, maybe if I was some hard-charging hedge fundie. But for the average investor, the more rapidly & radically one’s portfolio changes, the more likely it’s the result of poor/faulty decision-making! And I suspect this is even more true of thesis-driven investing – the biggest & most rewarding theses tend to develop/evolve over a long period of time, and likewise so should your portfolio…

Now, let’s consider some potential portfolio allocation implications, in terms of my current macro investment thesis. [Keeping in mind my recent Four Feds commentary]:

Emerging/Frontier Markets:  My underlying emerging/frontier markets thesis hasn’t changed a jot since I wrote this post (& its follow-up). But sentiment remains negative, with investors/commentators focusing on specific country surprises & disappointments, and the narrowing growth gap between developed & emerging/frontier markets. Currency weakness, esp. against the dollar, hasn’t helped either. But emerging/frontier markets are still the world’s growth engine, and will continue to trounce developed markets in terms of absolute growth. And the narrowing growth gap’s mostly due to starkly differing fiscal/monetary policies…investors might well ask themselves which policies are more sustainable? As for currency weakness – yes, it’s a short term hit, but it also improves their terms of trade substantially.

But doubters question whether a new export-led growth surge is even possible, citing lower developed market growth/demand. Which strikes me as a remarkably stupid argument…if you expect lower Western growth, surely it strengthens the case for high growth emerging/frontier markets investment?! Many which now appear to be reaching an inflection point, where domestic middle class/consumer demand’s emerging as a new growth driver, reinforcing or even supplanting existing export-led growth.

Baby Boomers…Yes, It’s All About Them!

Tags

alternative assets, American Dream, austerity, baby boomers, consumerism, emerging markets, entitlement spending, fall of communism, frontier markets, globalisation, Japan, Me Generation, Millennials, USA

In my last post, I acknowledged logic tends to fly out the window in a market correction, and fear & greed take over the driving. My advice was to take a deep breath, just accept the fact we don’t always know what’s coming next, and to positively transform the compulsion to do something anything to relieve your market-induced stress. Because a correction’s a wonderful upgrade opportunity, a chance to (re)deploy your weaker portfolio holdings & cash into higher quality growth companies – those compounders you hardly ever get to buy. Happily, things look a little rosier now (a special thanks, Japan!), and hopefully we’re now heading into a traditional year-end rally…

Of course, long-term performance is the best reminder to always remain invested in the market. Unfortunately, fear & greed can quickly undermine such compelling logic. Companies face a similar issue – it takes a great leader to keep a company set on its long-term growth trajectory, despite all the setbacks it will obviously encounter. The idea great leaders are great storytellers is interesting in this context – it suggests numbers & analysis aren’t enough, people often require a compelling narrative to motivate & help them stay the course. In terms of the markets, the more you can interpret & understand the narrative of the past, the better equipped you will be to see the long-term narrative arc & how it might continue playing out in the future.

So, let me share some of my market narrative. Remember, it’s a story – it doesn’t require proof, and it won’t necessarily remain set in stone. [Accordingly: I’m sure I’ll include plenty of links, but I’ll try resist the temptation to jam this post full of graphs & figures]. You may nod your head, agree, and ponder the implications for your own portfolio – or you’ll replace it with your own narrative…and that’s good too. I’m going to focus on the US here: i) because it’s the growth-engine of the world, and ii) where the US goes, much of the world tends to follow. I’ll also focus on the Baby Boomers – because they bloody deserve the blame…for just about everything! [I promise you’ll hear this more & more in the years to come]:

The Boomers grew up to a constant refrain: A never-ending list of the immense sacrifices and hardships their parents & grandparents endured during World War II & the Great Depression before it. Quite a dose of survivor guilt to be saddled with… Except when they started to come of age in the ’60s, they looked ’round and saw they were actually living in the richest & most powerful country on earth. Hardship and sacrifice seemed like rather quaint & irrelevant concepts, while sexual & political liberation beckoned as a far more enjoyable way to embrace young adulthood. Unfortunately, just when getting a job, getting married, and having kids began to enter the equation, everything turned to shit…

Mea Culpa…

Tags

alternative assets, blogging, developed markets, diversification, emerging markets, frontier markets, growth investing, portfolio allocation, technical analysis, value investing

Surely about time I address this post to readers – the majority of these mea culpas are genuine apologies, the rest are probably just a little cranky:

i) ‘Sorry I didn’t get to your email/comment sooner…’

I like to think I’m fairly good at keeping up with your emails & comments – well, most of the time! As I’m sure you know, if you neglect to answer an email immediately, it’s all too easy to lose track of it. There’s also a daily mountain of spam I have to traverse – at this rate, I should be ditching the investing lark, ‘cos apparently I could be making an easy million squid a day instead… [I must applaud the sheer persistence & inventiveness of the Nigerian people – so definitely an economy worth considering! Guaranty Trust Bank (GRTB:LI), anyone?] But hopefully I get to (almost) every email in the end, even if it takes a week or three – if I don’t respond in a timely manner, just ping me again.

Unfortunately, I tend to suffer from a ridiculously compulsive version of ‘If you don’t do it well, why bother doing it at all?!’ So emails invariably seem to demand a specific & in-depth reply – um, which I often have to get ’round to completing… Might be a good idea to keep track of some of my recurring reader dialogue(s), and summarize/respond to them more systematically here instead – we’ll see, perhaps it might offer up a couple of interesting insights for readers.

But please, keep ’em coming, they’re much appreciated. Investing’s ultimately a pretty solitary activity, so ‘work’ socializing tends to be a more deliberate affair – emails/comments are a great opportunity each day to just hang out at the ‘water-cooler’ & shoot the breeze with fellow investors!

ii) ‘Sorry, yeah…actually, I did see that headline’

There’s obviously blogs out there providing excellent daily/weekly updates of the latest & most relevant news, weekly reading links, company & valuation updates, plus other interesting snippets & topics. Clearly, this blog isn’t one of them…

I’m definitely grateful for & awed by their industrious contribution, but personally I’m more than happy to rely on the fact you’re all reading & analyzing the same headlines as me! 😉 And from my perspective, individual headlines usually only add very incrementally to the mosaic of knowledge I already have about the markets, sectors & stocks I’m interested in. And in my defence, I also fall back on my Twitter account – I’ve somehow managed to accumulate an horrific 8,000+ tweets at this point, so surely there’s some interesting & contemporary tweets among them!?

iii) ‘Sorry I poured cold water on your favourite stock’

Portfolio Allocation (XV – Emerging & Frontier Markets)

Tags

asset managers, BRICS, closed-end funds, developed markets, dollar-cost averaging, emerging markets, frontier markets, Hong Kong, Howard Marks, NAV discount, NAV premium, portfolio allocation, reductio ad absurdum, Trading Economics

Continued from here. [And most definitely, this is the last post in the series!]

This might actually be the perfect time to write about emerging markets – the developed market douche-bags (DMDs) are out in force again, warning us emerging markets are tanking… It’s a common refrain: a) developed markets are in recession, emerging markets must tank, b) developed markets are showing zero growth, emerging markets must tank, c) developed market growth’s bouncing back & rates are rising, emerging markets must tank, and d) well…emerging markets simply must tank!

2013 may turn out to be even sillier. So far, most of the year’s been spent denigrating – nay, reviling – emerging markets, simply because developed stock markets have done so well. Of course, the sub-text here is ‘why don’t you just forget/sell emerging markets (forever) & just stick to developed markets?!‘ Christ on a rope, that’s like handing out bloody gold medals to whoever took the most steroids… And now developed markets have caught a dose of the colly-wobbles in the past week or two – again, DMDs would have you believe it’s another good reason to sell emerging markets. Yes folks, we’ve finally reached the point of reductio ad absurdum:

i) Developed markets go up – sell emerging markets,

ii) Developed markets go down – sell emerging markets, and

iii) Don’t forget i) & ii).

Portfolio Allocation (XIV – Emerging & Frontier Markets)

Tags

agri-business, correlation, corruption, developed markets, Donegal Creameries, emerging markets, Europe, financial crisis, frontier markets, German property, Japan, portfolio allocation, portfolio performance, QE, US, volatility

Continued from here. Wow, it’s been a leisurely journey – spanning a full year – is this really my last post of the series?! Hmmm, we’ll see… Here’s my portfolio allocation pie chart one more time:

[NB: This is from Jun-2012, but since then the only major changes (funded mostly from my Hedge Fund allocation) are: a) an increase in Property from 10% to 13%, as I continue to scale up my German property exposure (see Parts I to V – also here), and b) a large jump in Agri from 5% to 11%, due to my purchase of Donegal Creameries (DCP:ID) & its subsequent hefty appreciation. Note I don’t classify DCP as an Irish stock – after all, the company feeds people (potatoes, mushrooms & yogurt) and animals, what could offer a more ideal uncorrelated exposure?!]

EIIB – Closing The Value Gap

Tags

% of AUM, AUM, EIIB, European Islamic Investment Bank, frontier markets, GCC countries, Investor Relations, Islamic finance, MENA, NAV discount, Norges, Rasmala Holdings, share buyback, Sharia'a, Zak Hydari

In mid-April, I realized it was a full year since I’d last posted about European Islamic Investment Bank (EIIB:LN). No real neglect on my part (EIIB is now a Top 3 holding for me), but simply an undimmed confidence in their underlying story & intrinsic value. A fresh write-up made sense (esp. with 2012 final results due for release), as I suspected EIIB would be a brand new & interesting stock for a lot of (more recent) readers. [The stock actually rallied +15% in the week after my post].

The results speak for themselves, and received an enthusiastic reception from current & prospective shareholders. [EIIB shares are now up +27% since my last post]. These are the first set of results to properly illustrate EIIB’s new asset management strategy, its operational turn-around & progress to date, and the exciting potential of the MENA region. Again, see my prior post, but I definitely encourage you to read the full set of results – or even better, the entire annual report! Let’s divide the rest of this post into four sections:

Highlights:

– Assets under Management (AUM) increased +53% to $922 million, including a mandate win from Norway’s sovereign wealth fund

– EIIB & Rasmala staff/operating expense costs were basically halved – ahead of forecast, with some further efficiencies targeted for 2013

– Underlying business operating near-breakeven (GBP 0.6 mio pre-tax loss, exc. write-downs & discontinued ops.)

– A reduced GBP 13.3 mio in legacy assets targeted for an orderly exit

– Balance sheet risk continues to reduce, with 75%+ of assets invested in cash, deposits & fixed income, and liabilities limited to 25% of total assets

– Wholesale strategy confirmed, with new distribution agreements signed & existing relationships deepened. Re-iterated $3 billion AUM target by 2016

Also, this commitment from the CEO particularly grabbed my attention: