New Portfolio Snapshot & Allocation

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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

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Current Portfolio Snapshot & Allocation

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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

UK Asset Managers & Argo Group

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% of AUM, Andreas Rialas, ARGO, Argo Group, asset managers, Charlemagne Capital, Dolphin Capital Investors, Ex-Cash Ratios, F&C Asset Management, Impax Asset Management Group, Investor Relations, Kyriakos Rialas, Miton Group, NAV discount, The Argo Fund, Third Point, UK

In April, I took a closer look at the universe of UK-listed asset managers. A key piece of research was a (relatively) simple analysis which focused on financial stability & market valuation – this study also offered a useful peer comparison with Argo Group Ltd. (ARGO:LN) (& see this recent post).

Frankly, the numbers (plus the rest of this post) speak for themselves, but let’s have a taste of the main highlights:

Name	Ticker		Net Cash/Inv as % of Mkt Cap
F&C Asset Management	FCAM		(23)%
Liontrust Asset Management	LIO		3.9%
Henderson Group	HGG		6.2%
Aberdeen Asset Management	ADN		7.9%
Jupiter Fund Management	JUP		8.4%
Polar Capital Holdings	POLR		16%
Ashmore Group	ASHM		18%
Miton Group	MGR		26%
Schroders	SDR		34%
Man Group	EMG		55%
Impax Asset Management Group	IPX		59%
Charlemagne Capital	CCAP		64%
Median			17%
Argo Group	ARGO		175%

It’s encouraging to see the entire sector now enjoys robust financial health. Only F&C Asset Management (FCAM:LN) is in a net debt position – all other companies sport net cash & investments on their balance sheets. But it’s also clear this healthy financial position is not the key driver of market valuations – for Argo’s peer group, net cash/investments only represents a median 17% of market cap. On the other hand, Argo’s $23.6 mio of net cash/investments amounts to a whopping 175% of its market cap.

Hitting The Century (V – Ireland)

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% of world GDP, Andrew Langford, COR, default, Emerald Isle, Europe, European sovereign debt crisis, Event Driven, Fairfax, FBD Holdings, Greece, home bias investing, Ireland, Irish value investing, ISEQ, Prem Watsa, Price/Book, Return on Equity, taxes, Thatcher, Total Produce, Trinity Biotech, UK, Wilbur Ross

Continued from here. OK, let’s take a look at my next investment allocation:

Ireland (16%):   So much for all my rabbiting on about home-bias, what a terrible job I’ve done here..! Ireland accounts for a whopping great 0.3% of world GDP, and yet I’ve got 16% of my portfolio invested in the Emerald Isle (yes, please visit, all tourist revenues gladly accepted)!? OK, so, in my defence:

i) C’mon, everybody’s doing it! I’m confident 16% is far lower than the average Irish investor (and US investors are just as bad – how many realize US GDP is now just 22% of world GDP?).

ii) As Philip O’Sullivan (taking off the green jersey?!) reminded me, these stock picks are not that Irish anyway! Total Produce (TOT:ID/LN) is essentially pan-European, Trinity Biotech (TRIB:US) operates primarily in the US (& Europe) – I guess FBD Holdings (FBD:ID, FBH:LN) is my only true Irish exposure!

Hitting The Century (IV – UK)

Tags

alternative assets, benchmarking, currency allocation, emerging markets, Eurogeddon, Europe, frontier markets, home bias investing, portfolio allocation, rationing, thematic investing, UK

Hitting my 100th blog post (hence the title!) in late June, I thought I’d celebrate with a more in-depth series looking at my portfolio construction (i.e. approach to stock-picking), allocation & valuation metrics. Part I briefly revisited (plenty of other commentary recently) my stock-picking approach, and then tackled currency allocation – a surprising introduction for some readers, perhaps!? I suspect it was also my most footnoted post ever…aah, those were fun! Part II touched on the risk of home-bias, and then reviewed my portfolio investment allocations from an overhead perspective.

Part III would logically have continued with a drill-down into these allocations… But I’d just updated a few missing figures in my valuation & analysis file(s), so I opted to first share some detailed portfolio valuation (& performance) metrics. I was actually surprised not to see greater feedback on this post – I don’t think I’ve seen many (any?) analyses of this sort across the web. Anybody out there fancy doing something similar? – I’d love to see it 🙂

Wexboy Readers Around the World!

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Africa, BVI, China, Falkland Islands, Greece, Ireland, Malvinas, North Korea, Singapore, South African Property Opps, Tanzania, UK, Ukraine, USA

WordPress Stats. have been getting better & better – I’m impressed! Thought it would be fun to share some random info. on my Wexboy readership:

– Smallest:  British Virgin Islands. OK, shared with 13 other countries. Aren’t all the investment co/hedge fund managers in BVI? Surely more than a few would have come across my blog by now? What? Oh, you’re really in London (or NY) – the taxes are just dandy, but you don’t like the restaurants in BVI – ah, I see!

– Most Politically Correct:  Falkland Islands – yes, it’s also labeled as Malvinas! Yes, this was WordPress’ idea.