Member Info for dimi123

Https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/london-stock-exchange-seeks-challenge-trading-data-overhaul-2026-06-09/

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/lseg-slowly-sheds-ai-risk-tag-with-drive-show-growth-2026-06-11/

This is probably the reason for the volatility today:

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/02/the-cftc-has-sparked-a-potential-revolution-on-wall-street-exchange-stocks-are-dropping.html

Going back to investing, Berkshire Hathaway has just announced it will acquire Taylor Morrison. While the name sounds a bit like Taylor Wimpey and Morrisons have had a merger, it's actually a US home builder. Lame joke aside, it does seem to be a confirmation of our thesis here to invest in house builders at this precise time, despite the elevated interest rates, affordability concerns and construction costs. While there are some differences between the US and UK housing market those issues are the same, as is the long term need for more housing.

It'd be interesting to hear your thoughts on this!

I'm guessing it's because Starmer said he's not quitting. The bond markets seem to prefer Starmer and Reeves v Andy Bernham or Rayner. Less hard left wing spending means lower rates, which improves house buyers' affordability.

I find that's often the case for great companies with strong moats and just keep chugging along. There just isn't much to discuss.

I remember buying American Express at the end of 2023. I remember going to Seeking Alpha articles and looking for comments about this blue chip owned by none other than Warren Buffett himself. Not a peep! I would've thought at least Buffett fans, like myself, would be following and discussing it. I ended up making a 70% return over 2 years. Nobody cared about that stock.

Now go to the board of some shareholder value destroying mining stock and people are having feuds over what the price of nickel is going to do. Or even worse, the house builder boards - people get quite political arguing over government policy, where interest rates are headed, etc.

Personally, I like the quite boards, long may it continue!

Let's not get emotional.

“You’re not right or wrong because 1,000 people AGREE with you.

And you’re not right or wrong because 1,000 people DISAGREE with you.

You’re right because your facts and your reasoning are right.”

— Warren Buffett

The facts are that AI will have no impact here, LSEG is still making money, paying dividends and buying back shares. Actually the buybacks now add more shareholder value than before. Excellent opportunity for anyone with the patience and stomach for this. I've topped up once again!

I asked AI about the sell of and it said basically the average fast money investor has no clue whether LSEG itself will be impacted by AI or not. They just sell the whole sector. Since LSEG's data is proprietary, AI can't use it without a license. In fact LSEG already has a deal with Anthropic about this. So no impact for LSEG, but that might not be the case for other companies in the same sector, who might really be impacted. But the fast money crowd and the algos don't do that kind of even shallow analysis, they sell first ask questions later. In this case the baby gets thrown out with the bath water, as the whole sector, ETFs, etc are being sold.

Personally, I've topped up today even though I already had a "full" position. If this nonesense continues, I might add more. Perhaps a lesson there for me on position sizing, but that's probably of no interest for the fine crowd on here!

Here's the AI's analysis:

---

Bottom Line (Buffett/Munger lens)

Market noise ≠ moat change.

This sell-off is:

a short-term fear response,

lumping together disparate segments,

and conflating general-purpose AI hype with enterprise data reality.

Your LSEG investment isn’t fundamentally threatened here — in fact, Anthropic using LSEG content reinforces that:

Data scarcity for quality enterprise AI is not the same as commodity text outputs.

LSEG acts as an input gatekeeper that AI must license.

Partnership integration is a strategic drift inward, not outward displacement.

In Buffett/Munger terms:

Fear creates opportunity but doesn’t always reflect value destruction.

Disruption stories must be tested against real cash flows, contracts, and pricing mechanisms — and there’s no evidence yet that AI will erase those for LSEG.

Congratulations everyone! Fantastic set of resuts.

I think the concern here is that Rightmove's moat has been breached by AI - I can go to Chat GPT and ask it for listings in my area. It will then agregate the listings from different estate agents like Foxtons, Dexters, etc. Then I can go and view the listings on the estate agent's website. No need for Righmove! A few uni students with a laptop and a six pack of Carling can probably even create a specialised estate agent chatbot in couple of hours.

Rightmove are basically acknowledging this and saying WE want to build that chatbot, so people still come to Rightmove as the entry point for their property search. Therefore, we're willing to throw the kitchen sink into that investment, just like so many other tech companies have done.

Personally, I think they have a very good chance of being successful with this but it's going to take years potentially, and the market is short term oriented. Also, the timing of the announcement is poor. Few months ago the market was rewarding investments in AI but right now even META and Zuck got punished, as if they're burning money into the metaverse. Basically, a lot of people invested in these asset light tech businesses because of the high margins. But now that they have to invest a ton of money like a more traditional company in order to fend off the competition, of course the marings start to drop. We're seeing that here with the margin expected to drop to 67% instead of 70%.

Ben, I've been thinking a lot about this recently - the same applies for software/technology, which is where I earn my living. If you compromise on quality things end up being done slower and more expensive!

This very much goes against the so called Iron Triangle that they learn in business school, that you can only have 2 of the 3: quality, speed and low cost. This is then used as an excuse by senior managers to start cutting corners. Eventually things blow up of course. However, since there's a lag between compromising quality and the eventual sorry results often those types have moved on by that point, to their next high paying job. If they do get exposed they can always say that it was the software engineers/builders who did a poor job.

To take this back to investing, since this is an investment board - I think focusing on quality also helps with getting better investment results faster. If you buy shares in a business with a solid balance sheet and good competitive advantage like Wimps, you'll end up doing much better than buying some cigar butt company that might be cheap but is potentially going out of business because it's poorly run and has lots of competition. Thinking about something like retailers here, for example Debenhams/Boohoo which has been a disaster for shareholders.

It's ex-dividend date tomorrow, I believe you need to buy today in order to collect the dividend.

I saw someone on the Taylor Wimpey board that got confused and thought they can buy on the ex-dividend date and unfortuantely they missed out on the payment. So I thought to drop a quick line on here in case someone is wondering :)

UK planning bill amendments added with new powers to tackle ‘blockers’

https://www.ft.com/content/ad2da39b-ce65-4693-8b94-cb67e0e76d62

Is that the reason behind the strong rise here in the last 2 days? We're up 6%. Particulalrly today it's really standing out as the markets are down quite a bit.

"Goldman Sachs cuts London Stock Exchange price target to 13,200 (13,450) pence - 'buy'"

Bernstein with an 870 price target. That's about 25% upside!

The shorts have gone down quite a bit since the FTSE rebalancing.

I have shares in Euronext and they're also down 3%. Deutsche Boerse is down 2%. Seems like a sell off for all the European stock exchange businesses. Not sure what caused it. Perhaps renewed American exceptionalism trade due to the AI craze that's going on across the pond.

I use a kiwi tool called Sharesight which does the math. I've even integrated it with my broker so it autlatically logs all my trades within 24h. I have my shares in an ISA, but if you need it for tax purposes I believe it can even generate tax reports that your tax accountant (or you yourself) can use. It's pretty good at tracking performance, which gets quite tricky to do myself especially with US stocks because of the currency changes.

I'm not sure how useful it will be if you want to track your profits going back 10 years in time. If you have records of your buys, sells, and divi payments you might be able to add those to the tool manually going back in time. Then it should be able to do the math. There's a free version I believe, so you could try.

Considering they're doing buybacks the lower price means higher shareholder value from the buybacks. If the CEO has good capital allocation in mind he'll probably be rubbing his hands. I personally think couple of big insider buys will do a better job than a statement to stabilise the share price.

I'll be topping up myself in case the price stays low tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, I already have a full position since it dropped so fast so quickly, but hey ho, why not break my own position sizing rules and add some more?! What could go wrong?!

My broker says that the AGM is on 17th September. Perhaps there will be some news during the meeting, or an announcement that morning. Or both.

Is anyone going to the AGM btw?

Just a thought, is Rayner frying the shorts here?! Who says that two negatives don't make a positive!