Ryan Mee, CEO of Fulcrum Metals, reviews FY23 and progress on the Gold Tailings Hub in Canada. Watch the video here.
Sold about £12k worth this morning, normally I would see the current situation as a buying opportunity but I had already been planning on trimming my £140k SMT holding at 13% of my portfolio as I have often thought that BG in general have been living off the glitter dust called Tesla and the volatility of SMT was getting to me. As I write SMT is 14% down already in 2022 and 5% down from 01/01/21 . I am beginning to think that an investment in BG is about whether they will find the next blockbuster or not.
Some very positive statements here presumably by folk trying to talk up the price, however the FT over the past few weeks has a more negative view and even quoted analysts who are having difficulty valuing the company. I have a relative who works for THG in a central function to whom I spoke over Xmas and told me that it was difficult see whether the business was in good or bad shape. I guess the financial engineers have been hard at work.
At 10% SMT is the worst performing part of my portfolio this year and easily the most volatile. Yes I know it had a spectacular year in 2020 but that was largely down to Tesla. By comparison this year S&P500 tracker 29%, BUT 29%, Fundsmith 22% , SSON 18%, Blue Whale 19%. L'Oreal 30% and there are a few others. I know most of us are in for the long haul but keep it in perspective. I hold £140k in SMT so I am committed but I might trim it down a bit.
SMT has been very volatile recently and as of today it has gained 14% in 2021 which puts it near the bottom of most of the funds in my portfolio (eg Fundsmith, SSON, BUT, S&P500, Blue Whale, Rathbone Global have all done better). Admittedly, 2020 was spectacular but looking back over the last 5 and 10 years there have been long periods of middling performance and I was wondering if the performance in 2018-20 was really just down to Tesla and if anyone carried out that analysis? Before I get accused of short termism I have been investing for 45 years and currently have about £150k or 15% of my portfolio in SMT.
Not sure that I believe some of the metrics on this site, the share price shown is often at odds with other sources and some buy trades I have put through have shown up as sells
We all like to see a steadily rising share price but ultimately all that matters is the price when you sell. Up until then the lower the better if you are investing new money. However I am as bad as the rest in hoping for a steady rise but that's psychology for you.
From what I recall from one of the SMT webinars their position is that they act like a venture capital company where they invest in small companies pre IPO. They admit that this is risky and that most of their investments go nowhere but this is far outweighed by the few that make it big, the classic one being Tesla where one report puts the BG outfit making £24bn overall. This of course, relies on a long investment horizon. To some extent this is not that different to the direction Woodford was going in but he had a few things against him like using an OEIC structure, using the Guernsey stock market to get around holdings limits and most of all investing in fairy tale no hope businesses.
My take on the digital age is that we are still in the early stages of exploiting digital technology after a false start with the dot com boom in 2000. I feel that we are where the Victorians were in the 1850's when steam and rail travel started to open up the economy with lots of startups and company successes and failures on the way. The only real difference is that in those days the products were more tangible eg a railway rather than something promised on a PowerPoint slide.
Yes you can have an ISA account with Fundsmith. Have a look on the website. The only drawback is that since you can only have one ISA per year you can only invest in FS that year so I opened one and then transferred a load across from HL . One thing to note is that you will hold T class shares in FS direct but I class on other platforms like HL so when I did it I had to do a transfer in cash although it might be different now. HL would be charging me nearly £2.5k a year in platform charges if I was still with them
Any suggestions as to why the shares are at a 9% discount?
@ Everglade Fundsmith is something I started buying back in 2011 and just keeps cruising up and I have never sold it or taken a profit. I stopped adding to it about 4 years ago as it was starting to get too large a proportion of my portfolio but it kept on growing. It's all held directly with FS so no platform charges and the nature of the holdings gives it an element of defensiveness. I have to admit that I did have a large position in Woodford but luckily jumped ship in 2016 as his performance flattened and put that in Fundsmith too. Pity I hadn't discovered SMT at the time though.
@ Everglade Fundsmith is something I started buying back in 2011 and just keeps cruising up and I have never sold it or taken a profit. I stopped adding to it about 4 years ago as it was starting to get too large a proportion of my portfolio but it kept on growing. It's all held directly with FS so no platform charges and the nature of the holdings gives it an element of defensiveness. I have to admit that I did have a large position in Woodford but luckily jumped ship in 2016 as his performance flattened and put that in Fundsmith too. Pity I hadn't discovered SMT at the time though.
I have been investing for over 45 years and have a simple strategy go with your winners and be ruthless about ditching things that don't deliver decent growth every year. So I now out of a £1m ISA portfolio my largest holdings are £520k in Fundsmith, £160k in SMT , £170k in SSON. £80k Rathbone Global Opps. I have always been fully invested so virtually no cash apart from a few £k in my current account. I get the impression on this forum that there are quite a few day traders here who would find my portfolio quite bizarre.
I have started selling down my position in MNKS it's gone nowhere for a year and last years performance was on the back of Tesla.
Or a bit of both perhaps? I hold over £150k in each at the moment but I wonder how much of SMT's performance is down to a single company ie Tesla?
@robleo No inheritances apart from £50k in 2016 and no business sales. I am 73 and it's all been from regular contributions over the years from salary (and now pension) and following successful fund managers like Antony Bolton, Woodford ( in the early days but jumped ship in 2016), then other names like Nimmo, Buxton and Terry Smith (I now have about £500k in Fundsmith). I have always run with my winners - which is why I have so much in Fundsmith . I keep very close eye on the managers and I will drop a manager as soon as performance plateaus. I run a number of fantasy portfolios where I invest a notional £100 on Jan 1st each year in trusts that I am interested in following so I can see daily how they are all doing. SMT is currently slightly behind Fundsmith in 2021 on 13%. My biggest holdings outside Fundsmith at present are SMT and SSON (which has nearly doubled since inception 3 years ago). If I was to voice a concern about SMT and some of the other BG funds it would be that a lot of recent gains have been on the back of a very successful punt on Tesla. Lets hope they continue to be lucky. :)